Taking stock of eight years of implementation of Seguro Popular in Mexico

This paper reviews the empirical evidence on the consequences of the introduction of Seguro Popular, a program designed to provide affordable health services to almost 50 million people uninsured by Social Security in Mexico. The evidence so far shows that Seguro Popular has been a very effective tool in reducing catastrophic health expenditures for Mexican families. However, the literature has been unable to identify substantive health effects yet, although they most likely will materialize in the near future. Furthermore, a series of papers discuss the implications of the Seguro Popular for the labor market, with mixed results. We try to shed some light on the lack of consensus by examining differences in the data used and their coverage. We also discuss some implication of these results for policy and future research.