The Development and Welfare of the Population in Mining Municipalities of the State of Sonora

Abstract

In recent years Sonora stands out in the production of gold and silver in the country, being the only producer of molybdenum, amorphous graphite, and wollastonite (Secretaría de Economía, 2020), but what has it left for the inhabitants of the state? The objective of this paper is to know the levels of development and welfare of the population in the municipalities that host the main mining centers of Sonora by 2020. To do this, we first estimate a municipal socioeconomic development index using the principal components analysis (PCA) and then, to evaluate the results, we compare it with the well-being indexes calculated by the National Council for the Evaluation of Social Development Policy (CONEVAL,2021). It was found that of the ten municipalities in which the main mining centers of Sonora are located, 4 municipalities are classified in the Very High socioeconomic development stratum, 1 in the High stratum, 2 with Low development and 3 with Very low socioeconomic development; however, five of these mining towns had around 40% of people whose income did not allow them to achieve their economic wellbeing and, in one municipality the proportion exceeded 50% of people in such condition.