In Mexico, around 9.1 million people over 18 years of age have some type of informal credit in force and, of these, 3.5 million used it to buy food, personal expenses or to pay for services such as electricity, water, among others.
Informal loans range from family loans, to requests to bankruptcy holders outside institutions such as commercial banks. And, according to the National Survey on Household Finances 2019, the bulk of these debts goes to the payment of food.
However, of the total debtors estimated by the survey, by informal means, 1.6 million allocate resources to health expenses. This behavior is more observed among women than among men.
Education is important too, which is why more than a million people use informal loans to pay for educational expenses. And of this total, 60% are women.
They use payroll loans to pay off debts
But Mexicans also get into debt formally, although to a lesser extent. At the time of the survey, there were 4,307,335 million adults who had a payroll or personal loan with a formal institution.