ABSTRACT
Since the economic crisis began in the early 1980s in Mexico, there has been a reduction of public funds devoted to education and a dramatic reduction in teachers' wages. The teaching profession today is in serious social and academic crisis mainly because it is no longer a profession to which young people are attracted. During the recession that followed the economic crisis of the 1980s, the government cut wages rather than employment in the public sector. Teachers suffered the brunt of this reduction: in 1988, salaries in the public sector had fallen 55 percent, compared to 78 percent for teachers (International Labor Organization 1995, 51). The average monthly salary ofMexican teachers in 1995 was less than half in constant dollars than it had been in 1981. This was an improvement over their low in 1988, which represented 22 percent of what teaching salaries had been in 1981 (lbarrola 1996).
