Extreme poverty in Chile appears to have barely declined since late 2024, even though wages are growing faster than inflation. According to La Tercera, that is the finding of a microsimulation by the Center for Public Studies (CEP), a private think tank, published in that outlet by its academic coordinator, Sebastián Izquierdo.
The starting point is Casen 2024, the National Socioeconomic Characterization Survey, which periodically measures how many Chileans are poor. That survey found that 17.3% of the population lived in income poverty and 6.9% in extreme poverty, meaning in households whose income is insufficient to afford a basic basket of consumer goods.
Those figures use a new methodology, so they cannot be compared with the previous series. They also reveal critical areas: poverty affects 25.7% of children aged 0 to 3 and almost four in ten single-parent households headed by women with children.
The problem is that this snapshot dates from November 2024. Since then, unemployment has reached 9.6%, and there is still no official measurement showing how that affected households.
To estimate the impact, CEP projected Casen income figures through July 2026, taking into account changes in wages, government transfers and poverty lines. Think of it as a simulator: it is neither a new survey nor a forecast of the next Casen, but an exercise that isolates two opposing forces, higher incomes and lost jobs.
The result is revealing. In a scenario where nobody had lost their job, poverty would fall to 15.7% and extreme poverty to 6.3%. When job losses are included, poverty stands at 16.3% and extreme poverty at 6.8%, almost unchanged from 2024.
In terms of people, lost jobs prevent more than 122 thousand people from escaping poverty. The logic is simple: a pay rise only helps if you have a wage. For someone who has become unemployed, there is no pay adjustment.
The safety net also falls short of cushioning the blow. In the simulation, only three in ten workers who lose their jobs receive unemployment insurance, and that benefit offsets, on average, around 13% of the income of all displaced workers.
The author himself acknowledges limitations. The exercise does not account for jobs created in sectors that grew, so it does not estimate the full change in poverty. Even so, he cites a study by Cases and Vergara (2026) documenting fewer opportunities to find employment and a shift toward self-employment and small businesses, where social protection tends to be weaker.
Izquierdo links these figures to the debate over the 2027 Budget. He cites the controversy over the termination of the Yo Elijo mi PC program, closed following unfavorable evaluations, and proposes prioritizing access to work for vulnerable households: removing barriers such as caregiving duties and skills gaps, strengthening protection against income loss and funding initiatives that create additional jobs.
"Wages determine how much the situation improves for those who work; employment determines who can share in that improvement," Izquierdo wrote. The next Casen will confirm or correct this estimate; meanwhile, the budget debate for 2027 will be the first setting in which it is put to the test.
