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The distribution of public investment within federal states is often subject to significant political discretion. Yet one of the possible consequences of such discretion is the appearance of path dependency in the way in which public investment is distributed. Mexico offers a unique example of the effect of path dependency in resource allocation, as there has been no political competition over more than seventy years. The authors seek to examine the dynamic structure of the regional distribution of public investment empirically, to test for the existence of path dependency and the influence of the different federal governments in Mexico. They use time-series intervention analysis methodology to study the structure of, and the influence of government change in the allocation of, public investment in Mexico between 1971 and 1999. Findings suggest the existence of path dependency in the distribution of public investment in Mexico during all except for the most recent governments. In other words, federal government change made little difference to the way in which public investment was allocated. Path dependency was only broken in the 1990s, coinciding with the setting up of the North American economic integration process, which in turn led to the loss of public support for the single political party, the Partido Revolitcionario Institucional or PRI, which had been in power in Mexico over the last seventy years. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The association of insurance expansions and the distribution of health status is still a matter we know little about. This paper draws upon new measures of pure (univariate) inequality and mobility which accommodate categorical data to understand how an expansion of public insurance may be related to both health inequality and mobility. These measures require a definition of individual's status that is either "downward looking" or "upward looking". Using data from the Mexican Family Life Survey, a nationally representative longitudinal survey, we find that the distribution of health has worsened in Mexico between 2002 and 2009, although the change is only consistent for an upward looking definition status. Together with the lack of mobility in self-reported health, we can thus conclude that Mexico has become more rigid over time despite the rapid public health expansion that took place over the 2000s decade. While further research on the potential drivers of health inequalities is needed, our findings suggest that insurance coverage alone may be not enough to reduce health disparities and promote health mobility. Indeed, health inequality and mobility likely depend on a myriad of factors beyond health care., (© 2021 John Wiley & Sons Ltd.)