The Spatial Distribution of Poverty in Chile: Stasis and Change in the Neoliberal Era

Leif Jensen, Pennsylvania State University

For most of the 1990’s, Chile enjoyed rapid economic growth and export expansion that resulted in some declines in measured poverty. At the same time, worries about increasing income inequality and a late-1990’s recession have maintained poverty as an issue of concern. The purpose of this paper is to document the level and pattern of spatial inequality in Chile with a focus on poverty and its correlates, and how spatial inequality changed over the 1990’s. We use descriptive mapping as well as both spatial and aspatial measures of segregation in an analysis of nationally representative household survey data from Chile for the years 1990 and 2000.