Access to Healthcare Services Falls 18.6 Points: INEGI

Access to health services in Mexico declined between 2016 and 2024, according to INEGI’s Social Rights Information System. The share of the population without deprivation in health access fell from 84.4% to 65.8%, a drop of 18.6 percentage points. The data highlights pressure on the constitutional right to health and reveals persistent regional disparities. Nuevo Leon and Baja California Sur reported coverage above 80%, while Chiapas and Puebla lagged behind. 

Access to health services in Mexico declined significantly between 2016 and 2024, according to updated data from the Social Rights Information System (SIDS), published by the National Institute of Statistics and Geography (INEGI). 

The proportion of the population without deprivation in access to health services fell from 84.4%  in 2016 to 65.8% in 2024, a decrease of 18.6 percentage points, signaling mounting pressure on the effective guarantee of the constitutional right to health.

The figures position health as one of the most sensitive dimensions within Mexico’s broader social rights framework. Under Article 4 of the Constitution, the State is obligated to ensure the progressive and comprehensive protection of health. The SIDS measures whether that obligation is materializing in practice, translating legal commitments into quantifiable indicators that assess availability, accessibility, and quality of services.

The decline in effective access reflects outcome-level challenges in the health system. While the data do not attribute causality, the magnitude of the shift suggests structural and operational constraints affecting service coverage. The SIDS framework distinguishes between formal recognition of rights and their real-world fulfillment, allowing observers to track whether public policy advances or stalls over time.

Regional disparities remain pronounced. In 2024, Nuevo Leon and Baja California Sur reported the highest levels of population without deprivation in access to health services, each at or above 80%. In contrast, Chiapas registered the lowest proportion nationwide, with only 36.7% of its population without deprivation in health access. Puebla followed with 52.7%. These figures point to uneven territorial capacity to deliver health services and highlight persistent gaps between northern and southern states.

Geographic accessibility to hospital care presents a more stable national trend but masks localized vulnerabilities. In 2024, 93.3% of the population reported being within two hours of hospital services in case of emergency, compared to 93.9% in 2016. However, states in the south with complex topography and lower road density reported lower coverage. In Chiapas and Guerrero, between 81.1% and 86.0% of the population met the two-hour benchmark. Oaxaca recorded the lowest share at 75.2%. These disparities indicate that physical proximity to care remains a structural barrier in certain regions.

The SIDS organizes health indicators under the broader architecture of effective access, one of its two central components alongside inequality gaps. The effective access module comprises 53 indicators across education, health, social security, housing, and food, measuring service sufficiency, physical and economic accessibility, and quality standards. In health, these indicators allow for evaluation of whether public infrastructure, financing, and institutional arrangements translate into tangible service delivery.

The inequality gaps component, composed of 81 indicators, provides additional context for interpreting health outcomes. It examines structural disadvantages affecting children and adolescents, youth, older adults, Indigenous women, and persons with disabilities, and includes gender gap indicators. This design enables intersectional analysis of how health access varies across demographic groups, although the headline national figure already signals systemic strain.

Methodologically, the SIDS is grounded in a Human Rights-Based Approach, which integrates international human rights standards with development metrics. It uses structural indicators to assess legal and institutional frameworks, process indicators to evaluate policy implementation and resource allocation, and result indicators to measure real-life outcomes. The health access figures fall within this results category, reflecting the lived experience of the population rather than solely institutional commitments.

INEGI publishes the SIDS as part of its mandate under the General Law on Social Development, which requires objective and quantifiable evaluation of social policy. The system complements multidimensional poverty measurement by focusing specifically on the effective exercise of rights. By enabling comparison over time and across states, it allows policymakers, private sector stakeholders and civil society to detect regression, stagnation or progress in health service provision.