IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/hal/journl/hal-05449322.html

Social gaps, perceived inequality and protests

Author

Listed:
  • Olivier Bargain

    (BSE - Bordeaux sciences économiques - UB - Université de Bordeaux - CNRS - Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique - INRAE - Institut National de Recherche pour l’Agriculture, l’Alimentation et l’Environnement, IUF - Institut universitaire de France - M.E.N.E.S.R. - Ministère de l'Education nationale, de l’Enseignement supérieur et de la Recherche, IZA - Forschungsinstitut zur Zukunft der Arbeit - Institute of Labor Economics)

  • H. Xavier Jara

    (LSE - London School of Economics and Political Science)

  • David Rivera

    (BSE - Bordeaux sciences économiques - UB - Université de Bordeaux - CNRS - Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique - INRAE - Institut National de Recherche pour l’Agriculture, l’Alimentation et l’Environnement)

Abstract

Latent feelings of economic vulnerability and social stagnation may have catalyzed the unprecedented uprisings that shook Latin America and other parts of the world in 2018–2019. We document this process in the context of Chile, leveraging survey data on protest participation and its potential determinants. Specifically, we construct a "social gap" index, measuring the disconnect between objective and perceived social status. Our findings suggest that this status misperception predicts protest involvement beyond factors such as perceived living costs, the subjective value of public services, peer influence, redistributive views and political demands. Notably, the social gap operates independently of broader feelings of unfairness and anger toward inequalities in explaining protests.

Suggested Citation

  • Olivier Bargain & H. Xavier Jara & David Rivera, 2026. "Social gaps, perceived inequality and protests," Post-Print hal-05449322, HAL.
    • Handle: RePEc:hal:journl:hal-05449322
    DOI: 10.1016/j.worlddev.2025.107248
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    To our knowledge, this item is not available for download. To find whether it is available, there are three options:
    1. Check below whether another version of this item is available online.
    2. Check on the provider's web page whether it is in fact available.
    3. Perform a
    for a similarly titled item that would be available.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    ;
    ;
    ;
    ;

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:hal:journl:hal-05449322. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: CCSD (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://hal.archives-ouvertes.fr/ .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.