La pobreza

Four million poor in Chile: Updating the poverty line

The Basic Needs Basket is used to measure poverty in Chile. The base is a minimum food basket and a multiplication factor that provides thetotal cost of satisfying the minimum food and non-food needs. The result is compared to household income. According to official figures, poverty would have fallen from 18.7% of the population in 2003 to13.7% in 2006. However, the basket now used was elaborated on the basis of consumer patterns in homes in Greater Santiago in the period 1987-1988. Many economic, demographic and social changes havetaken place since then that make a revision of the poverty line necessary. This can now be done with the information from the 5th Survey on Household Budgets, conducted between 1996 and 1997, andalready used a few years back to update the CPI basket.
This work is based on the analysis developed by the Foundation to Overcome Poverty to update the poverty line using official information. Thisarticle redoes the calculations on that basis and determines that 29% of the population was still impoverished in 2006, i.e. more than twice the official figure. The different concepts of poverty areexplained in detail in the development of the argument as well as the reasons why the line must be updated and the pending challenges.

Cuatro millones de pobres en Chile: actualizando la línea depobreza
Para medir la pobreza, en Chile se aplica el método de la Canasta de Satisfacción de Necesidades Básicas. Su base es una canasta mínima de alimentación y un factor multiplicador que entrega elcosto total de satisfacer las necesidades mínimas alimentarias y no alimentarias. El valor resultante se compara con el ingreso familiar. De acuerdo a las cifras oficiales, la pobreza se habría reducidodel 18,7% de la población en 2003 al 13,7% en 2006. Sin embargo, la canasta actualmente vigente se elaboró en base a los patrones de consumo de los hogares del Gran Santiago en los años 1987-1988,...