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Spatial Inequality in Chile

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Despite success in reducing poverty over the last twenty years, inequality in Chile has remained virtually unchanged, making Chile one of the least equal countries in the world. High levels of inequality have been shown to hamper further reductions in poverty as well as economic growth and local inequality has been shown to affect Duch outcomes as violence and health. The study of inequality at the local level is thus crucial for understanding the economic well-being of a country. Local measures of inequality have been difficult to obtain, but recent theoretical advances have enabled the combination of survey and census data to obtain estimators of inequality that are robust at disaggregated geographic levels. In this paper, we employ this methodology to produce consistent estimators of inequality for every county in Chile. We find a great deal of variation in inequality, with county-level Gini coefficients ranging from 0.41 to 0.63.

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  • Claudio Agostini & Phillip Brown, 2007. "Spatial Inequality in Chile," ILADES-UAH Working Papers inv178, Universidad Alberto Hurtado/School of Economics and Business.
    • Handle: RePEc:ila:ilades:inv178
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    Cited by:

    1. Maria S. Floro & Javier Bronfman, 2012. "How Well have Social Protection Schemes in Chile Reduced Household Vulnerability?," Working Papers 2012-03, American University, Department of Economics.
    2. Graw, Valerie & Husmann, Christine Ladenburger, 2012. "Mapping Marginality Hotspots – Geographical Targeting for Poverty Reduction," Working Papers 147917, University of Bonn, Center for Development Research (ZEF).

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    More about this item

    Keywords

    Inequality; poverty mapping; Chile;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • O15 - Economic Development, Innovation, Technological Change, and Growth - - Economic Development - - - Economic Development: Human Resources; Human Development; Income Distribution; Migration
    • D63 - Microeconomics - - Welfare Economics - - - Equity, Justice, Inequality, and Other Normative Criteria and Measurement
    • O54 - Economic Development, Innovation, Technological Change, and Growth - - Economywide Country Studies - - - Latin America; Caribbean

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