Poverty Estimating Poverty for Indigenous Groups by Matching Census and Survey Data

Abstract

It is widely held that indigenous Chileans experience greater rates of poverty and indigence than non-indigenousChileans, yet the evidence to date has been based on surveys that are not representative by ethnicity. In this paper,we use poverty mapping methodologies that are typically applied to geography to develop statistically preciseestimates of poverty, indigence, poverty gaps, and indigence gaps for each of the eight indigenous groupsrecognized by Chilean law. We find that indigenous people experience higher rates of poverty and indigence andgreater depth of poverty and indigence than non-indigenous people. These results hold within individual regions,suggesting that the differential access to economic opportunities in different parts of the country cannot fully explainthe results. We also find that the burden of poverty is not shared equally across indigenous groups. Instead, theMapuche and Aymará experience disproportionately high poverty rates. We argue that including ethnicity incriteria for identifying poor households may help policy-makers to improve antipoverty targeting.Poverty; Indigence; Ethnicity; Poverty Mapping; Chile