Good Stuff from the Times

I second the rest of the world in recommending Damien Cave's piece about declining Mexican illegal immigration. It's really good, and it deserves even more credit for rejecting a lot of what you read about Mexico in the American media. The multimedia additions are also great. Anyway, at one point he writes:

Per capita gross domestic product and family income have each jumped more than 45 percent since 2000, according to one prominent economist, Roberto Newell.

That's impressive, but if anything, it understates the scale of the improvement. By PPP standards, per capita GDP jumped by 64 percent from 2000 to 2009.


The only thing I would add is that the late '90s increase in immigration lagged the peso crisis by a few years, so by that logic it's possible we could see a bump in illegal immigration in the years to come. Also, the state of Mexican labor market doesn't seem quite so enviable to me.