Income and wealth percentile in Mexico
a year per adult, before tax; half of adults in Mexico earn less
The wealth ladder in Mexico
The middle adult in Mexico holds Mex$353,485 in net worth. The top 10% of holders begins at Mex$2,799,804 and the top 1% at Mex$16,626,204, which is 47 times the middle.
In Mexico the middle adult earns Mex$167,528 a year before tax and holds Mex$353,485 in net worth. The top 10% of earners begins at Mex$898,145, and the top 1% of wealth at Mex$16,626,204. Figures are per adult, in MXN.
Built for Mexico
Calculators and reference pages that answer for Mexico specifically.
Every published line
Income and net worth per adult in Mexico, in MXN.
| The line | Income | Net worth |
|---|---|---|
| Median | Mex$167,528 | Mex$353,485 |
| Average | Mex$468,134 | Mex$1,650,330 |
| Top 10% | Mex$898,145 | Mex$2,799,804 |
| Top 1% | Mex$5,280,365 | Mex$16,626,204 |
| Top 0.1% | Mex$22,394,791 | Mex$92,696,164 |
| Top 0.01% | Mex$125,252,047 | Mex$516,809,421 |
What the numbers say about Mexico
Mexican median income is around Mex$167,500 per adult, roughly $9,200 at current exchange rates. The average sits at Mex$468,000, nearly three times the median. That ratio places Mexico among the most unequal economies in Latin America, even after a decade of slow narrowing. The economy runs on three things. Manufacturing exports to the United States under USMCA, oil and remittances on the macro side, and a very large informal services sector that employs roughly half the workforce.
The north-south divide runs through every economic statistic. The northern border states (Nuevo León, Coahuila, Chihuahua, Sonora, Baja California) have integrated deeply with US supply chains. Monterrey hosts industrial conglomerates and a significant high-end services sector. The maquiladora belt employs hundreds of thousands in electronics, automotive, and aerospace assembly. Median wages in Nuevo León run roughly double the median in Chiapas or Oaxaca. The southern states show development indicators closer to Central America than to northern Mexico, with high indigenous populations, low formal employment, and weak public services.
Remittances from Mexicans working in the United States have become a structural part of the income picture. Roughly $63 billion flowed back in 2023, equivalent to about 4 percent of GDP and several times direct foreign investment. The flow concentrates in Michoacán, Guanajuato, Jalisco, and Oaxaca, where it often supports household consumption, small-scale construction, and informal-sector business creation. Remittance income does not reliably show up in formal-sector statistics, which understates the actual living standards of recipient households.
Wealth concentration at the top is sharper than in any peer economy of similar income. The top 1% threshold for wealth sits above Mex$16.6 million, with the top 0.1% above Mex$92 million. Carlos Slim's América Móvil and Grupo Carso, the Servitje family's Bimbo, Germán Larrea's Grupo México, and a small set of regional banking and retail families dominate the top of the distribution. Many of these fortunes trace to the 1980s and 1990s privatisations of state-owned firms, which created a generation of very large industrial holdings concentrated in a small number of hands.
Two themes shape the next decade. Nearshoring, the relocation of manufacturing from China to North America, has lifted industrial investment in Monterrey, Querétaro, Saltillo, and the wider Bajío region significantly since 2022. And security conditions in several states remain difficult, which limits where productive investment can credibly land.
Common questions
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Where do these figures come from?
Nearby by median income
Every free tool
Method and sources
- World Inequality DatabasePretax national income per adult and net household wealth per adult.
- World Bank Informal Economy DatabaseInformal output as a share of GDP, the input to the level correction.
How the lines are worked out
The national distribution is fitted as a log-normal body with a Pareto top tail and read at each published point, per adult. Where a country’s own records measure less activity than its output implies, the level of the distribution is lifted toward the implied figure and the spread is left as published: that correction is set out in full on how we measure.
How a percentile is read off it
A percentile is the share of adults at or below a figure. The percentile methodology page states the fit, the anchors and the vintage.
What these figures do not cover
- Per adult, not per household. Couples are counted separately, so household figures run higher.
- Income is gross, before income tax and employee contributions.
- Local currency at the reference rate carried with the record, Mex$1 = $0.055.
- A national figure says nothing about a region or an occupation inside it.
Last updated July 2026.
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