Gustavo Petro seeks to change a model of social strata that promotes segregation in Colombia

Colombia has a system of social strata that has been disfigured.

The intentions of the technicians of the nineties were good: to identify the inhabitants of the richest areas - located in levels 5 and 6 - so that they would subsidize the public services of those who lived in the most impoverished areas - groups 1, 2 and 3 —.

But the classification of homes and streets that, from an administrative point of view, determines belonging to a social class became a system that transcends electricity or water bills and defines the position of people.

Segregation has been accentuated to the point that, for some, Colombians live immersed in a kind of caste system.

Now, the Government of Gustavo Petro has taken the first steps to end this phenomenon, an old desire of the left-wing president and dozens of technicians.

The path, however, is not at all easy.

The system arose from the 1991 Constitution, which establishes that the tariff regime for home public services must incorporate “criteria of solidarity and income redistribution” that help the most vulnerable populations.

The challenge was that the State did not have good information to define who had more or less resources.

In a country with high rates of informality, an income declaration would not have been an adequate indicator.

As these were services tied to homes, the strata system was chosen, which deduced the socioeconomic situation of people through records of the facades of their houses or the state of the surrounding streets.

The mechanism, according to several experts consulted, worked.

The electrification network grew and many people accessed public services at affordable rates.

The problem was that the system took on psychological and social connotations over the years, according to Fernando Montenegro, professor at the Institute of Urban Studies at the National University of Colombia, explained by phone.

“It began with a purely physical and spatial component, based on the urban and architectural quality of the properties.

But it transcended the social sphere and became a description of the people who lived in the homes.

In some private schools, for example, you can ask what stratum you live in to see if I accept it or not,” comments the academic.

The mechanism also began to be used to define rates not related to home services, such as some taxes or university tuition.

Streets of the municipality of Soacha, southwest of Bogotá, where 90% of the population is classified in strata 1 and 2. NATHALIA ANGARITA

For years many technicians, and some politicians, have criticized the system.

Among them is the current president.

When he was mayor of Bogotá (2012-2015), Petro proposed building social housing for victims of the armed conflict in stratum 6 areas of the wealthy north of the capital.

“Social stratification in Colombia is a caste system, anti-democratic, anti-republican and anti-human.

“That must end,” he declared then about an initiative that did not prosper.

Years later, as president, his rejection of this mechanism remains intact.

“Stratifying the population is almost like dividing it into castes, insurmountable from one another, as in India.

(...) This entire society should be a democratic society, not divided according to its social conditions,” he said in October last year during a meeting with citizens in Bogotá.

But the difficulties are not limited to segregation.

Beyond Petro's rhetoric, there are efficiency problems in the targeting of resources that technicians in the National Planning Department (DNP) have been studying for years.

Professor Montenegro emphasizes that the strata do not always reflect the socioeconomic situation of all its inhabitants.

There are people who inherited luxurious apartments in stratum 5 and 6 areas and who now collect minimum pensions with which they have difficulty paying their high rates.

There are also wealthy users who live in areas classified as part of group 1 and who benefit from subsidies that they do not need.

There is no easy solution to either problem, be it social segregation or efficiency and justice in collection.

It is not possible to eliminate the mechanism at a stroke when around 75% of the population of cities like Bogotá is from strata 1, 2 and 3, and pays reduced rates - 4 is not subsidized, but it does not contribute to financing the others either. .

It is not even easy to update stratification to make it more efficient and, in financial terms, more sustainable: reclassifying users from lower strata to higher ones so that they pay more implies high political costs that mayors are not willing to assume.

The decree

At the end of December 2023, the Government published the draft of a decree that it advertised as the first step to eliminate stratification.

The initiative proposes the creation of a Universal Income Registry (RUI) that will cross-check several indicators on the socioeconomic situation of Colombians.

It proposes integrating data from existing instruments such as the System for Identification of Potential Beneficiaries of Social Programs (Sisben), a survey of households that may be subject to subsidies other than those for public services.

In addition, it contemplates the inclusion of information on banking movements, digital transactions and income levels.

It will seek to encourage, for example, a self-declaration of socioeconomic status that will then be subject to verification processes.

People spend the day in a park in Chicó, in Bogotá.

The majority of the neighborhood's inhabitants are in strata 5 and 6.Jeff Greenberg (Getty Images)

The DNP's objective is to have the decree ready this quarter and thus begin a long process that must still define methodologies.

The pilot evaluations will extend through 2025 and the implementation phases will begin in 2026. The text does not mention stratification, but the expectation is that it will allow the consolidation of a new mechanism that will eventually serve as an alternative.

When this option is available, it will still be necessary to modify the 1994 home public services law, which established the strata as the mechanism to focus subsidies.

Only then can a gradual replacement of the current system begin.

Carlos Sepúlveda, professor and former dean of the Faculty of Economics at the Universidad del Rosario, believes that the importance of the initiative goes beyond the stratification system.

“The DNP has managed to attract attention by saying that it will dismantle the strata, but what is really important is to draw attention to making the State as a whole more efficient,” he remarks by phone.

He comments that there are now better tax and labor records than in the nineties, and that Colombia should take advantage of this to “make its collection instruments more complex.”

Lawyer and geographer Nataly Montoya, a professor at EAFIT University, believes something similar, adding by phone that having reliable information allows the State to assist the people who need it most.

“The Registry is important because social policy needs to clearly identify the income levels of each inhabitant,” she emphasizes.

Both experts emphasize that we must distinguish between the need to consolidate a more efficient system and the president's anti-caste rhetoric.

Montoya points out that the possibility of incorporating more complete records of information does not imply that a classification that divides between groups that have more resources and others that are more vulnerable ceases to exist.

“The targeting logic is going to be the same.

The need to focus is evident, especially in a State like the Colombian one, which cannot offer the same services to everyone and has to decide where it invests its resources,” he points out.

For Sepúlveda, replacing the strata with a system composed of better socioeconomic measurements does not imply solving the segregation problems that concern Petro.

“Colombia is a segregated country, with or without strata,” he says.

Workers intervene on the highway in commune 4 of Soacha, Cundinamarca. NATHALIA ANGARITA

Segregation

The deputy director of Foresight and National Development of the DNP, Juan Gallego, acknowledges by phone that incorporating new methodologies will not necessarily solve the segregation that characterizes Colombia.

“It is true that other Latin American countries, like Chile, are not stratified by properties, and are still segregated by neighborhoods.

That means that the issue goes further (...), it requires pedagogy and a constant fight against inequality,” he says.

However, the official believes that solving the problems of efficiency in targeting social policy will contribute in the long term to reducing inequality in the population's income levels.

“This is going to help us reduce the connotation of socioeconomic segregation a little,” he says.

The Executive is also aware that offering a new system does not imply that other entities stop using the measurement of strata.

It will be up to the mayors and governors to decide whether they still use the old mechanism on other issues, such as property taxes or cultural benefits.

However, Gallego is confident that the RIU can offer the necessary incentives to leave the strata behind.

“They have to recognize that in the current system there are many inclusion errors [of people who do not need subsidies].

If you offer a mechanism superior to that before, the territorial entities will surely use it,” he emphasizes.

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