Living Longer, Many of Mexico's Elderly Face Difficult Conditions in Twilight Years Xinhua
go to original July 12, 2015

Charity Offers Hope to Mexico's Mixtec Elderly (Al Jazeera)

Blind with diabetes, 75-year-old Don Jesus Alipio Moran thanked "life and God" for allowing him to get up every morning with the energy to look for his daily bread by singing old fashioned Spanish songs like "Carino Verdad" in the Alameda Central, a park in Mexico City's historic center.

"I get up very early to get my insulin injection that they give me in the Social Protection System for Health program and then I have breakfast, get ready and take the bus to work," the elderly man told Xinhua.

...Don Jesus is just one of the 10.5 million senior citizens (people at 60 and beyond) in Mexico. And trend shows that by 2030 there will be more elderly people than young people under 18, according to official statistics.

However, living longer brings many difficulties to senior citizens in a society that is not well-prepared for aging. In Mexico, 3.5 million people aged 65 or above live in poverty, and of those, 800,000 are living in extreme poverty, according to official statistics.

...For over a decade, elderly people over the age of 68 in Mexico City have been receiving a monthly food allowance of 934 Mexican pesos (59 U.S. dollars). However, more and more senior citizens can not get this kind of help due to the rapid increase of senior citizens in the country.

According to the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development headquartered in Paris, senior citizens in Mexico live the poorest life among all its members, and only one third of Mexican old population is covered by the social insurance system.

Read the rest at GlobalPost

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