ABSTRACT
The analysis of the way in which the state regulates and takes care of poverty is fundamentally important within the framework of the economic and political change that is taking place in Mexico. This chapter identifies two broad sources that contributed to the delineation of welfare policy during the national revolutionary government, using ideas of the elite that determined the solutions that policymakers could adopt, and that were anchored in the paradigm of the centrality of the state. Within the framework of the close relationship between democratization in Mexico and the de-politicization of anti-poverty programs, a new anti-poverty program was designed, the Program for Education, Health and Food. The most important institution for attending to health and social protection is the Mexican Social Security Institute (IMSS). The decentralization of health services resumed in 1996 by means of the strengthening of a National Health Council as a permanent coordinating body among the federal government, the states, and the Federal District.
