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11% of Chileans do not have enough food, according to the Latinobarometer

2021-01-25T18:31:58.913Z


Lack of food is a permanent problem of the last decade, according to the largest pollster in Latin America


A neighbor from Santiago de Chile prepares to receive a package of food from the Government, on May 22.IVAN ALVARADO / Reuters

Chileans face socioeconomic difficulties, which is expressed in different indicators, including food shortages.

According to Latinobarometro, the largest pollster in Latin America, 11% of the citizens of the South American country say they do not have "enough food to eat."

“This, beyond the poverty indicators, shows the inequalities that today are intolerable in the Chilean reality.

Another dimension not considered and that is part of the reasons for the social outbreak [of October 2019] ”, says the report on Chile with which the survey commemorates its 25 years and which was released today from the Chilean capital, Santiago.

When the same question was asked in 2011, 19% said they did not have enough food.

But the index had dropped to 7% in 2017. It was in 2018 when it took the leap again and 13% declared food shortages.

According to Marta Lagos, founder and executive director of the Latinobarómetro corporation, "2018 was the

annus horriblis

for Latin America, because the region regressed to the levels where it was in the years of the Asian crisis", at the end of the decade of the ninety.

“No indicator of all the measured ones had a positive evolution and the fall of many reached a historical low.

Institutions fell in 2018 to their lowest level of trust in the region and politics to its highest level of disenchantment ”, Lagos analyzes.

For the economist, the X-ray was the immediate precedent of the social mobilizations in different countries of the region and of October 18, 2019, when the riots in Chile exploded, which, as she describes, has been "the worst social crisis in the history of the country".

Then, in March 2020, the covid-19 pandemic broke out.

"The shortage of food is a permanent problem in Chilean society, which has been ignored in the last decade by the news agenda, public policy and politics in general," says Lagos.

The report presented this Monday tries to explain the reasons for the outbreak that put Chilean democracy on the ropes, which, despite everything, continues to be valued by citizens.

According to the survey - which includes 1,200 face-to-face interviews between October 28 and November 26 throughout the country (except on the islands), support for democracy in Chile has increased continuously since 2016: by 54% to 61% today.

"Chileans want more democracy, they recognize the malfunction of the current one and they want a new Constitution that allows the better functioning of a true democracy," says the survey in reference to the constituent process that the South American country is developing and that on April 11 it will have its next milestone, with the election of the 155 citizens who will write the new Constitution.

"The pandemic has strengthened faith in democracy in the country, although many believe the opposite," concludes the survey, which presents data on Chile between 1995 and 2020.

The report, among other issues, asks citizens to self-classify their socioeconomic status: 57% declare themselves to be low class, 39% middle class and 4% high class.

“The largest class in Chile is not the middle class, but the lower class.

And this is not a product of the pandemic, "says the investigation.

"This discrepancy between public discourse and self-classification of social class is another of the disagreements between those in charge and the citizen in general and is on the floor of the social outbreak of 2019," says the survey.

According to the survey, only 49% of the population receives state aid, so the subsidies would not reach all the disadvantaged.

The fact that one in 10 people in Chile does not have enough food, according to the Latinobarometer, adds to another fact that reveals "the precariousness that is not incorporated into public discourse."

The survey points to job instability, because half of those surveyed (51%) say they are "worried" about being out of work in the coming months.

The survey ensures that it is not an effect of the pandemic, because fear of unemployment had already increased in 2017 to 50% and in 2018, before the riots and the health crisis, it had reached 51%, a figure similar to the current one.

"Job instability is the cause and not the consequence of the social explosion," says Lagos.

The survey also refers to trust in the institutions of democracy.

Only 16% trust the president, 13% in Congress and 7% in political parties.

Source: elparis

All news articles on 2021-01-25

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