Care, gender and social infrastructure
Who cares for whom?
An atlas of the care system in Cancún: where the children, older people and people with disabilities who need care live, who sustains that work — female-headed households, women out of employment, families without social security — and how far away the infrastructure that could share it is.
In one sentenceLocates the blocks where high care demand and distant services coincide.
Spanish original: ¿Quién cuida a quién?
Who sustains care in the city?
Caring for children, older people and people with disabilities is daily work, mostly done by women and mostly unpaid. A care system seeks to share that work among households, the state, the market and the community.
This atlas measures where demand is, who sustains it and how far away the infrastructure that could relieve it is.
Key findings
One in three households headed by a woman
91,563 households (32%) are female-headed; 289,259 people live in them.
A 25-point labour gap
Women's economic participation is 56%, against 81% for men.
Day care for early childhood
There are 68 day-care centres (25 public) for 33,057 children aged 0–2; 32% of children aged 0–5 live more than 1 km from one.
Residences for older people
The business directory records 17 residences for older people, one of them public, for about 55,000 people aged 60 and over.
594 priority blocks
High female headship, many young children and distant public day care: 61,372 residents, concentrated in the social-housing zone.
Approach
Step 1
Measure care demand by block (ages 0–5, 60 and over, disability) and the dependency ratio.
Step 2
Read who sustains care: female headship, economic participation by sex and social security.
Step 3
Locate care infrastructure by type and sector, and measure distance from every block.
Step 4
Identify priority blocks with explicit rules, without composite indices.
How to read it
- The directory records establishments, not places, hours or costs, and undercounts preschools.
- Informal and community care does not appear in these sources.
- Female headship does not imply vulnerability on its own; it is read together with care load and distance to services.
Data
2020 Population and Housing Census
Households and headship, ages, disability, school attendance, economic activity by sex and social security, by block.
Care infrastructure
Day care, preschools, primary schools, residences, primary health care and community kitchens, by sector.
What supports the method
- CEPAL (2017)Carers depend on nearby services, and a compact city of short distances serves care better (p. 60 and 65).
Paraphrased; page numbers refer to the PDF consulted. The library is in Spanish.
What you just saw
Demand (childhood, old age, disability, female headship) against care supply, with explicit rules.
What else this method can answer
- Where should a care centre open?
- Which areas should a social programme prioritise?
- Which services are missing for each age group?
In other places
Needs a block-level census and a directory of services.
Line of work
B · Accessibility, proximity and care →Do you have a similar question in your city?
Describe the problem
Next in Urban structure and societyCancún in transformation