70 Teachers In Mexico Earn More Than President Enrique Peña Nieto

Mexican President Enrique Peña Nieto, who took power in December 2012, has a lofty salary of $20,406 a month for leading the nation. While this value is less than the monthly income of U.S. President Barack Obama -- who makes $27, 867 a month -- Nieto's figure is surprising considering Mexico's monthly minimum wage is $136.70 a month and the GDP per capita (in 2011) is $12,813.80.

Even more surprising are the findings of the Mexican Institute for Competitiveness (IMCO), which revealed in the first teacher salary map of Mexico that there are 70 teachers in the nation that make more than Nieto. According to the report, composed by project coordinator Alexandra Zapata, the average salary of a teacher in Mexico is 25,153 pesos a month ($1950 at 12.9 pesos to the dollar).

The analysis of teachers in Mexico has revealed many irregularities including 1,440 teachers with the same birth date of Dec. 12. The map also found a large disparity with salaries within Mexico. In fact, of all the payrolls, teachers in the state of Oaxaca are said to have the largest salaries within the country.

Last fall, Nieto passed an education reform to improve quality of education by creating a national system for hiring, evaluating and promoting teachers independent of the "discretionary criteria" currently used in schools. And rightfully so: Of the 34 countries in the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), a group of relatively economically developed nations, Mexico spends the greatest proportion of its budget on education and ranks last on standardized test scores.