Vol. 21 No. 43 (2025)

Artículos

The impact of federal spending on education and healthcare on human development at the subnational level in Mexico, 2001 to 2021

Published 2025-12-31

  • Edson Valdés Iglesias
    • ,
  • Marco Antonio Méndez Salazar
    • ,
  • Roberto Gallardo Del Ángel

Edson Valdés Iglesias
Universidad Veracruzana, Facultad de Economía

Marco Antonio Méndez Salazar
Universidad Veracruzana, Facultad de Economía

Roberto Gallardo Del Ángel
Universidad Veracruzana, Facultad de Economía

Abstract

The objective of this research is to determine if there are short or long-term effects of federalized spending on education and health on the human development index at the state level in Mexico in the period from 2001 to 2021, since the federal transfer resources received by the entities are equivalent, approximately and on average, to 90% of their income. Each federal entity has intrinsic characteristics that differentiate it from the others—especially with respect to the determinants of human development—so it would be expected that the decentralization of public spending on healthcare and education would have differentiated effects on them. Although part of the literature indicates that the influence of government spending on education, healthcare and social security on human development can be positive, other studies emphasize that its effects are long-term and depend on the initial level of human development. Due to this variety of results, we chose to analyze the mixed dynamics of spending on education, healthcare, and the human development index (HDI) through the autoregressive distributed lag model (ARDL) for panel data. Our results suggest a positive influence in the long term, contributing to convergence between entities; however, differentiated effects are revealed in the short term, with a significant but negative impact of per capita spending on education on the HDI for a selection of states, contrasting with positive and significant effects of health spending for other entities.

 

Keywords

Human development, public spending on education, public healthcare, ARDL panel

PDF (Spanish)

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