North American Integration

13   Wage Differentials, Public Policies and Mexico-US Migration

Ernesto Aguayo-Téllez, Arun K. Acharya and Christian I. Rivera-Mendoza

INTRODUCTION

Economic conditions have been and will continue to be the most important driver of international migration from Mexico to the United States. Raw income differentials between the two countries have gone from 2.9 times larger in the United States than in Mexico during the 1970s to 3.2 times larger in 2010. Along with the widening of the regional economic and wage gap, the international migration from Mexico to the United States has increased from less than 120,000 migrants a year (or less than 2.4% of the total population of Mexico) in 1970 to more than 500,000 migrants a year (or more than 5.1% of ...