Immigration

Mexico City –  More than 5.3 million Mexicans over the age of 15 are unable to read and write more than a century after the outbreak of the 1910-1917 Mexican Revolution, during which time the population has grown from 15.2 million inhabitants to 112.3 million, the INEGI statistics agency reported.

Upon releasing the final results of the 2010 National Population and Housing Census, the president of INEGI, Eduardo Sojo, said that the number of illiterates in the country has dropped almost 5.5 percent, from 12.4 percent in 1990 to 6.9 percent in 2010.

According to INEGI, the states with the highest illiteracy rates are Chiapas, with 17 percent of the total, followed by Guerrero and Oaxaca, which account for 16.7 percent and 16.3 percent of the total, respectively.

The states with the lowest rates were the Federal District (Mexico City), with 2.1 percent of the total, Nuevo Leon (2.2 percent), Baja California (2.6 percent), and Coahuila (2.6 percent).

INEGI said that with its 112.3 million inhabitants, Mexico has the 11th largest population in the world.

The metropolitan area that includes the central state of Mexico and the Federal District has a population of 20.1 million inhabitants, the third largest in the world, trailing only Tokyo and New Delhi.

One relevant aspect found in the census was the change in the composition of the population pyramid, in which the number of minors declined in comparison with the rest of the population, while the number of adults increased.

In the past five years, 1.1 million Mexicans emigrated, and of those, 351,000 returned, while some 721,000 were still in other countries at the time of the census.

The states with the highest levels of emigration are Guanajuato (10.8 percent of the total), Jalisco (7.7 percent), Michoacan (7.7 percent), Mexico (6.8 percent), and Puebla (6.6 percent).

INEGI said that compared with the volume of emigrants noted in the 2000 census, the number has dropped by 31.9 percent.

With regard to immigrants, the agency said that residing in the country are some 961,000 people born in other countries, an amount that has tripled in the last 20 years.

As for the Indian population, INEGI said that some 15.7 million people in the country are considered indigenous, of whom only 6.6 million speak an Indian language, while the other 9.1 million do not.

One curious fact is that 400,000 of the people who speak Mexico's indigenous languages do not consider themselves Indians.

With regard to religious preferences, 83.9 percent identify themselves as Catholics and 7.6 percent as evangelical Christians. Other religions make up 2.5 percent of the preferences, while 4.6 percent said they were not affiliated with any religion.

Of the 35 million homes in the country, only 28 million are inhabited, leaving 4 million uninhabited and the rest occupied part time.

Of the 28 million homes that are occupied, 92.6 percent have television, 82.1 percent a refrigerator, 79.5 percent have radio, 45 percent have a car, 43.2 percent a telephone line, 29.4 percent a computer and 21.3 percent have Internet access, while in 65 percent of households at least one inhabitant uses a mobile phone.