The concept of equities and its contradictions: Mexican social policy

Abstract

The concept of equity creates disagreements between analysts from various disciplines and currents. For the design, implementation and evaluation of public policies, it is essential make it operational. This text seeks to discuss equities and presents an empirical application of this idea to social programs in Mexico. Different programs seek different concepts of equity, which creates unclear objectives and underlying contradictions in terms of the results obtained. Public policy designers aretherefore urged to explain the equity criteria that they use in order to clarify the type of effects of equity that they expect to obtained.