Abstract
The world's current dilemmas are focused on three alarming situations: environment, poverty, and food security. International community agendas aim to find specific strategies to obtain better practices to reach an improvement for international societies. The United Nations are diligent involving every international actor to promote public policies restructuring in states to generate the necessary and pertinent changes, especially in the less developed countries. Thus, the mechanisms used by United Nations are multilateral meetings in which important agreements are achieved, for example the works of the Millennium Development Goals (MDG), from which the authors spotlight the ones at the top of the list: poverty eradication and global primary education. Therefore, this analysis is carried out to contemplate the options to generate structural changes in public policies while observing the possibilities in educational and professional training toward human capital knowledge.
TopBackground
Since the 50s the International Community developed a new global economic order with the aim to obtain a balance between North and South; the processes have set off a market competitiveness which in turn has triggered regionalisms and, finally, in the globalization process that has stressed more the North-South gap.
The developing countries have not been able to achieve national and international economic development because poverty is a latent symptom considered as multifactorial, that is, due to the lack of food, education, labor and health as main causes. In addition to these characteristics, there are other measurement processes that each country or region apply to measure poverty. To this aspect, some consider daily wage, others by public indicators and other by ratios; finally, no matter how it is measured, the results report poverty and extreme poverty.
At a first analysis in the Latin-American, Spanish and European Union measurements, show that education is a relevant element to eradicate poverty; therefore this must be related in national development programs and in the productive sectors infrastructure, in such a way that, the implementation of strategies to raise the intellectual capital leading in productivity sectors and reflects in better employment opportunities, social wellness and low poverty rates.
Moreover, the case of Mexico and the mechanisms implemented by the government are analyzed in this area; in the first place, it takes it to the application of normativity and regulation to specify how poverty is measured in Mexico. In the same way, poverty has been defined as a multidimensional factor and it is determined by three aspects for its measurement: economic welfare, social deficiencies and territorial context. In this context, Mexico has designed a special procedure due to the existent inequality in the country, therefore, the measurement must be elaborated according to the characteristics presented in the studied units in such a way that the results carry out to poverty or extreme poverty.
The Mexican government has also implemented programs to eradicate poverty, one of them is “Oportunidades” with relevant actions for the benefit of society, and however it did not reach the expected indicators since INEGI shows that the southern states still show extreme poverty. Similarly the analysis of the Mexican government indicates that a key element to improve social conditions is located in the educational sector with which the employment sector can be strengthened and corporations can be more competitive in international markets.
Even Mexico has proposed on its national programs new structures to raise education in Mexico, as well as specialization of intellectual capital, strong figures related with poverty are still observed.
Key Terms in this Chapter
Knowledge: Understanding of or information about a subject that you get by experience or study, either known by one person or by people generally.
OCDE: The Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) to promote policies that will improve the economic and social wellbeing of people around the world.
CONEVAL: The Consejo Nacional de Evaluación de la Política de Desarrollo Social Policy (CONEVAL) is a decentralized public body of the Administración Pública Federal, with autonomy and technical capacity to generate objective information on the situation of social policy and the measurement of poverty in Mexico, which allows improving the decision making in the matter.
United Nations: The United Nations is a global organization that brings together its member states to confront common challenges, manage shared responsibilities and exercises.
Intellectual Capital: The value of all the knowledge and ideas of the people in an organization, or a society.
INEGI: The Instituto Nacional de Estadística y Geografía is an autonomous agency of the Mexican Government dedicated to coordinate the National System of Statistical and Geographical Information of the country.
Indicator: A sign or signal that shows something exists or is true, or that makes something clear.
WB: The World Bank is a vital source of financial and technical assistance to developing countries around the world. The World Bank Group comprises five institutions managed by their member countries.
Education: The process of teaching or learning, especially in a school or college, or the knowledge that you get from this.