Residential Segregation Effects on Poor’s Opportunities in Chile

This paper aims to identify whether or not the spatial concentration of poverty –also called economic residential segregation- affects the opportunities of the poor in Chile. Residential segregation is understood as the concentration particular population groups in determined geographical areas within cities. To identify the effects of segregation we use a panel of cross sections of the Casen household surveys, although the measures of segregation are computed from the Census data. The results suggest that segregation makes more likely that children from poor households do not attend preschool education, lag behind grades in school and drop out from schools. Segregation also makes more likely that the non student young from poor households do not participate in the labor force. On the other hand, segregation does not seem to have an effect on the probabilities of teenage pregnancy, young single mothers or the health status of the working age population