The dynamics of poverty and inequality in Chile and Honduras over the past three decades

In the early 1990s, Honduras and Chile started economic liberalization and introduced pro-market reforms. Their dissimilar political and economic arrangements translated into different roles of governments in reducing poverty and inequality. This chapter examines the dynamics of poverty and inequality over the past three decades in the two countries by going beyond the traditional income-based measures. It estimates multidimensional poverty and inequality metrics in a way that is largely unavailable in the existing literature. The two countries show diverging trends of poverty and inequality, which Chile has been more successful at reducing as a result of active antipoverty and equalizing measures.