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Poverty and Macroeconomic Policies: Chile 1987-1994

Keywords: Economic Policy, Poverty, Social Policies.

Poverty has declined substantially since 1987 in Chile. Has this reduction in poverty benefited all groups and regions? Are this specific sectors of the economy that have been left out of this reduction? These and other question are discussed in this paper. To do so, we characterize the poor in terms of education, employment, demographics and economic activity, as well as the economic policy framework prevailing during the last decade. It also discusses issues such as informality and minimum wages. This paper shows that there are no significant biases in poverty changes across de gender or rural-urban distinction. In addition, education has increased at all levels of income and demographics have not shown significant changes. Overall, one can conclude that the reduction of poverty has been equitable with just one exception, which is that poverty is much more concentrated in the non-mining primary sectors, mainly agriculture.