The US-Mexico border: a half century of change

The region surrounding the border between the U.S. and Mexico has been an area of dynamic growth and development during the last fifty years. In this region where the U.S. and Mexico share a common heritage, cultures and languages meet and intertwine. This paper presents a description of trends in population and quality of life indicators: education, housing and poverty, tracing how they have grown and changed over the last half of the 20th century. Census data from 1950 through 2000 indicate that population has grown more rapidly in the border regions than in the nations as a whole. Educational attainment and quality of housing has improved on both sides, but to a greater extent in the Mexican border region. However, despite this growth, poverty rates remain too high with no clear downward trend. (C) 2003 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.