The Mexican Urban Household : University of Texas Press : 9780292741669 : 0292741669 : 01 Sep 1990 : The sufferings of ?ordinary? people under harsh economic conditions can eventually lead to the fall of governments. Given this fact, it becomes important to know how ?ordinary? people live?what privations they suffer and what strategies they use to survive in times of economic crisis. The Mexican Urban Household provides this information for Mexico near the end of the twentieth century. Mexico is now a predominantly urban nation, and this study is the definitive work on the strategies of self-defense of its urban households. It is based on surveys of nearly 10,000 households, conducted during twenty years of field work in five very different cities, with the help of a staff of more than twenty Mexican social scientists, engineers, architects, and social workers. Far from being a compilation of undigested statistics, however, The Mexican Urban Household uses its rich data to vividly reve