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Notes on Quantitative History: Federal Expenditure and Social Change in Mexico Since 1910

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  24 October 2022

Thomas E. Skidmore  and
Peter H. Smith
Thomas E. Skidmore
Affiliation:
University of Wisconsin
Peter H. Smith
Affiliation:
University of Wisconsin
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James Wilkie's The Mexican Revolution: Federal Expenditure and Social Change Since 1910 is an industrious attempt to get beneath the conventional wisdom about the changes wrought by the Mexican Revolution. The author's careful compilation of budgetary data should sharply challenge the longstanding and widespread assumptions that: (a) useful historical material from Latin America does not exist in statistical form, and (b) even if it did exist, the mystical qualities of Latin culture defy all efforts at measurement. Wilkie has shown that—with luck, perseverence, and imagination—data can be found. One hopes that his example will encourage other students of the area to seek out similar data and reap further intellectual benefits from quantitative analysis: hypothesis-testing, measurement of trends, and rigorous comparison.

Type
Forum
Information
Latin American Research Review , Volume 5 , Issue 1 , Spring 1970 , pp. 71 - 85
Copyright
Copyright © 1970 by the University of Texas Press

Footnotes

*

With the assistance of Felicity M. Skidmore of the Institute for Research on Poverty, University of Wisconsin.

References

Notes

1. James W. Wilkie, The Mexican Revolution: Federal Expenditure and Social Change Since 1910 (Berkeley and Los Angeles, 1967).

2. For examples and discussion of quantitative history see Don Karl Rowney and James Q. Graham, Jr., eds., Quantitative History: Selected Readings in the Quantitative Analysis of Historical Data (Homewood, Ill., 1969); and Seymour Martin Lipset and Richard Hofstadter, eds., Sociology and History: Methods (New York and London, 1968).

3. For an earlier study of a Latin American country, see Henry C. Wallich and John H. Adler, Public Finance in a Developing Country: El Salvador—A Case Study (Cambridge, Mass., 1951). Wallich and Adler attempted to survey the total effect of fiscal policies (including, for example, counter-cyclical effects), while Wilkie has focused on a limited number of welfare effects. A bibliographical inventory including works on public finance and social welfare may be found in William Paul McGreevey, “Recent Research on the Economic History of Latin America,” Latin American Research Review, III (No. 2, Spring 1968), pp. 89-117.

4. Nonetheless, Wilkie's actual expenditures (Table 1-8) match precisely those in Aniceto Rosas Figueroa and Roberto Santillán López, Teoría general de las finanzas públicas y el caso de México (México, D.F., 1962), Anexo 6, for the years 1936, 1937, 1948-56 and 1958-60. The discrepancy for most of the other years (Rosas Figueroa and Santillán Lopéz go back only to 1935) is not very great.

5. Concentration on the federal level excludes other principal sources of expenditure from consideration—the Federal District, the state governments, and the local governments (municipios).

6. Rosas Figueroa and Santillán López give income and expenditure figures for thirteen of the largest decentralized agencies and state enterprises between 1939 and 1959, unfortunately excluding at least two of the most important agencies—the Comisión Federal de Electricidad and Petróleos Mexicanos (PEMEX). Teoría general, Anexo 18, p. 232. A general idea of the growing significance of these entities can be gained from their investment record, summarized in Secretaría de la Presidencia, Dirección de Inversiones Públicas, México: Inversión pública federal, 1925-1963 (México, D.F., 1964).

7. As noted by Wilkie, The Mexican Revolution, pp. 5-6.

8. There is an attempt to measure the “redistribution of National Income through the budget” in the El Salvadorean case study: Wallich and Adler, Public Finance in a Developing Country, pp. 185-90. This analysis included an investigation of taxation as well as expenditure.

9. A brief consideration of the welfare effects of some of these factors may be found in Raymond Vernon, The Dilemma of Mexico's Development (Cambridge, Mass., 1963), pp. 97-8, 106-7, 110.

10. See Eugene J. Webb, et al., Unobtrusive Measures: Nonreactive Research in the Social Sciences (Chicago, 1966).

11. On this point see Frank Brandenburg, The Making of Modern Mexico (Englewood Cliffs, N. J., 1964), pp. 7-18.

12. See, for example, the relevant section in a representative textbook: James Buchanan, The Public Finances: An Introductory Textbook, rev. ed. (Homewood, Illinois, 1965), pp. 224-35. A breakdown of federal expenditures between current and capital items (with a relatively large “undetermined” category) is given in Rosas Figueroa, Teoría general, Anexo 5, which covers the period from 1935 to 1961.

13. The identification of investment expenditure within general budgetary accounts is one of the most difficult problems in public finance. See Gerhard Colm, Essays in Public Finance and Fiscal Policy (New York, 1955), pp. 268-70.

14. For an example of the application of benefit-cost analysis to public investment in the United States, see Julius Margolis' study of the Bureau of Reclamation: “Secondary Benefits, External Economies, and the Justification of Public Investment,” in William L. Henderson and Helen A. Cameron, eds., Public Finance: Selected Readings (New York, 1966), pp. 193-210.

15. Other definitions of the categories offer little assistance to the baffled reader. One notable example of a circular definition, in Chapter 6, describes “economic” expenditures as “all the federal funds including capital investment allocated to agencies or budgetary categories which deal directly with the economic life of the nation” (p. 125). There is no explicit definition of “social” expenditure in Chapter 7. Indeed, the term “social” is used very differently in Part Two of the book, where “social change” means a change in the Poverty Index. In Part One, on the other hand, “social expenditure” refers to the arbitrary budgetary classification of Table 1-4. The temptation to draw unwarranted causal implications from this ambiguity is obvious.

16. For a widely-read analysis of the evolution of social class structure see Arturo González Cosío, “Clases y estratos sociales,” in México: 50 Años de Revolución, II: La vida social (México, D.F., 1960), pp. 31-77. A synthetic account may also be found in Pablo González Casanova, La democracia en México (México, D.F., 1965), Chapter VI: “Estratificación y movilidad social.”

17. Ifigenia M. de Navarrete, La distribución del ingreso y el desarrollo económico de México (México, D.F., 1960). There exists a very detailed income distribution survey for 1958: Secretaría de Industria y Comercio, Departamento de Muestro, Ingresos y egresos de las familias en la República Mexicana: Julio 1958 (México, D.F., 1960).

18. Wilkie may have been unduly ethnocentric in choosing the indicators for his index. Are “Indian” characteristics perhaps overemphasized? Most observers would appear to agree with the implied emphasis upon the rural poor. Nonetheless, other indices have been offered and should be viewed as possible alternatives. Figures on life expectancy, mortality from specific diseases, and the population covered by or assisted by the Social Security Institute system are given in Presidencia de la República, 50 Años de Revolución Mexicana en cifras (México, D.F., 1963), pp. 162-8. An interesting table of “indicators of the regional availability of basic public services” for 1960 is given in William O. Freithaler, Mexico's Foreign Trade and Economic Development (New York, 1968), p. 31. Freithaler includes the following six indicators: (1) functional literacy rate, (2) teachers per thousand children aged 6-14, (3) percentage of dwellings with running water, (4) percentage of dwellings with sewer connections, (5) percentage of dwellings with gas or electricity, (6) percentage of population covered by the Social Security system.

It should also be noted that González Casanova, attempting to estimate changes in the size of the “marginal” population, employs many of the measures later used by Wilkie: La democracia, esp. Chapter V, “La sociedad plural.”

19. These statements are based on Spearman correlations between the rank order in Poverty Level of the 32 entities in 1910 and in every other census year. The results: 1910-1910 = 1.0; 1910-1921 = 0.86; 1910-1930 = 0.86; 1910-1940 = 0.82; 1910-1950 = 0.84; 1910-1960 = 0.83. Raw data in Wilkie, The Mexican Revolution, p. 236.