Investigación
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Artículos en revistas con revisión por pares (WoS y JCR / Scopus y SJR)
- Sehnbruch, K., Prieto, J., & Vidal, D. (2025). Stuck in a bad job? The dynamics of poor-quality employment in Chile, 2004–2019. Social Science Research, Vol 131, 103206.This paper studies whether workers become "stuck" in poor-quality employment, or whether poor-quality employment can serve as a "stepping stone" towards better job opportunities in the Chilean labor market. It does this from a multidimensional and longitudinal perspective, taking into account the intensity of the deprivation that workers face. In particular, it examines how workers move between good and bad jobs, and between these jobs, unemployment and inactivity and also discusses the respective determinants of these changes. The results of this analysis show that the deprivation levels among women in the labour market are persistently higher than those of men, and that workers do indeed become stuck in bad jobs. Thus, the paper presents a methodology for measuring chronic deprivation in the labor market, an issue on which neither the literature on job quality nor the literature on poor-quality employment (or bad jobs) has focused. It concludes by discussing the policy implications of this research.
- Prieto, J. & Hoffmeister, L. (2025). Toward Better Measurement of Financial Risk Protection in Health Expenditure: The Case of Chile. Value in Health Regional Issues, Vol 47.Objectives: Our study highlights the impact of out-of-pocket health expenditure (OOPHE) in highly unequal countries, where the middle class is particularly vulnerable to declines in well-being. We modify 2 financial protection measures—impoverishment and catastrophic health expenditure (CHE)—to address this issue. The first adjustment improves the classification of households based on their risk of poverty due to OOPHE, whereas the second corrects the underestimation of CHE for poorer households and the overestimation for the richest. Methods: We applied our adjusted financial protection measures to data from the Chilean Household Budget Surveys (2006-2007, 2011-2012, 2016-2017, and 2021-2022) and compared the results with conventional CHE and impoverishment measures. Logistic regressions were used to identify factors associated with CHE. Results: Our impoverishment risk indicator indicates that approximately 10% of Chilean households entered poverty, became poorer, or were at high risk due to OOPHE. Our revised CHE measure suggests that approximately 15.8% of households faced financial hardship, with both figures exceeding conventional estimates. Households with more women and an older average age were more likely to experience CHE. Conclusions: Effective and equitable access to health services, along with adequate financial protection, is critical to achieving universal health coverage. However, in countries with high-income inequality and a high proportion of nonpoor households close to the poverty line, conventional measures may have blind spots for monitoring and analyzing financial hardship in health spending. This research provides evidence to open the debate on this issue.
- Carranza, R., Prieto, J., & Sehnbruch, K. (2025). Job loss and earnings inequality: Distributional effects of formal re-employment in Chile. Economic Analysis and Policy, Vol 86, 1020-1036.This paper examines the impact of job losses on the subsequent earnings of formal workers in Chile using administrative data. It contributes to the literature by examining the impact of job losses across the earnings distribution using unconditional quantile regression analysis. The paper thus provides evidence on the costs of losing a formal job in an emerging economy that is now considered 'high-income' but still suffers from high earnings inequality and other issues that characterise labour markets in developing countries, such as high job rotation. Our results show that, on average, wages decline by 42% in the first month after an involuntary job loss and never fully recover their previous level within our observation period of 3 years after this loss. Workers in the bottom 10 per cent of the earnings distribution experience greater wage losses after unemployment and take longer than average to recover. Conversely, those in the top 5 per cent experience little or no wage loss and even increase their wages over time. By having a more pronounced effect at the bottom of the earnings distribution, our findings suggest that involuntary job losses reinforce earnings inequality in the Chilean labour market.
- Prieto, J. (2024). Degrees of vulnerability to poverty: a low-income dynamics approach for Chile. Journal of Economic Inequality, 22, 1069–1107.I propose an empirical framework to identify different degrees of vulnerability to poverty using two vulnerability lines that classify currently non-poor people into risk groups: high, moderate and low risk of falling into poverty in the next period. The latter corresponds to the income secure middle class. My approach makes two contributions. First, it extends recent research that defines the middle class using a vulnerability threshold by introducing a new subdivision of the vulnerable group that would be useful in practice for public policy objectives. Second, it uses two models to predict both the probability of entering poverty and household income as part of the estimation procedures. The former controls for initial conditions effects and attrition bias, and the latter addresses the retransformation problem. I apply my approach to Chile using longitudinal data from the P-CASEN 2006–2009. The resulting vulnerability cut-offs (using the upper-middle-income country poverty line) are $20.0 per person per day for the low vulnerability line and $9.9 pppd for the high vulnerability line (both in 2011 PPP). My vulnerability lines differ significantly from those estimated in previous research on vulnerability and the middle class in Latin America. I argue that previous research has underestimated the size of the population at risk of falling into poverty and overestimated the growth of the middle class. Misclassifying the vulnerable as middle class limits their access to anti-poverty policies.
- Prieto, J., Sehnbruch, K., & Vidal, D. (2024). A dynamic counting approach to measure multidimensional deprivations in jobs. Applied Economics Letters, 1-6.The adjusted headcount ratio from the multidimensional poverty measures has been used in cross-sectional research on the labour market to study the cumulative aspects of multiple job deprivations. This article takes advantage of the decomposition property of this method to develop a dynamic model for examining and understanding the transitions between precarious employment dimensions and index changes from a longitudinal perspective using panel data from Chile. Evidence produced by this method shows multidimensional precarious employment traps in women, while men suffer greater deprivations in the social protection dimension despite economic growth and the overall decrease in the multidimensional deprivation index. Both results would not be evident if only a cross-sectional analysis were used.
- Prieto, J. (2022). A Multidimensional Approach to Measuring Economic Insecurity: The Case of Chile Social Indicators Research, 163(2), 823-855.This paper proposes a strategy to measure economic insecurity in countries in the Global South. It builds a 'Multidimensional Economic Insecurity Index' (MEII) that combines four indicators of economic vulnerability that cause stress and anxiety: unexpected economic shocks, unprotected employment or non-workers in the household, over-indebtedness and asset poverty. The index offers a measure that directly relates economic uncertainty to stress and anxiety due to the lack of protection and buffers to face an unexpected economic shock. The MEII is applied to Chile using Survey of Household Finances (SHF) cross-sectional data (2007, 2011, 2014 and 2017). The results show that (i) about half of the Chilean households experienced, on average, two or more economic vulnerabilities during the last decade with an intensity of 2.3 vulnerabilities, and (ii) economic insecurity affects households on the entire income distribution, even in the highest income deciles groups. By identifying the groups of households most affected by economic insecurity and its trend in recent years, applying the MEII in countries such as Chile provides relevant information to monitor, evaluate and improve social safety nets besides labour market regulations.
- Brain, I & Prieto J. (2021). Understanding changes in the geography of opportunity over time: The case of Santiago, Chile. Cities, Vol 114.The geography of opportunity research has made significant progress in recent years. The use of composite indexes aimed at capturing the attributes of different urban areas has been particularly useful to deepen the understanding of the role that the urban context plays in people's life chances. However, little attention has been paid to the dynamic component of the geography of opportunity, that is, what explains its changes over time and whether or not those changes (positive or negative) are substantial. The contribution of this work is that it offers a methodology (a conceptual framework, a composite geography of opportunity index and relative and absolute measures) that provides a holistic and in-depth approach to analyse not only the set of opportunities available in the different urban areas but also their change over time (how they change, the depth of those changes and the forces explaining it). The information generated through this approach has the advantage of better informing place-based policy interventions since it offers not only a clear classification of areas but also a useful method for comparing and monitoring the changes in the geography of opportunity over time.
- Sehnbruch, K., Carranza, R., & Prieto, J. (2019). The Political Economy of Unemployment Insurance based on Individual Savings Accounts: Lessons from Chile. Development and Change, 50 (4), pp. 948–975.In recent years, unemployment protection systems based on individual savings have been instituted in several developing countries. Chile was one of the first to establish such a system, which at the time was widely cited as a model for other countries. This article discusses the particular political context in which the Chilean system was created before examining how it works in terms of coverage and levels of benefits received by unemployed workers. The authors undertake a detailed analysis of the administrative data produced by the system and conclude that the insurance covers only a small proportion of the unemployed, as most workers generally had precarious jobs that did not allow them to contribute to the system consistently. The Chilean case illustrates how difficult it is to establish functioning unemployment insurance in developing countries with precarious labour markets. Based on the interaction between employment characteristics and the conditions imposed by the benefit system, the article assesses the efficacy of the Unemployment Insurance Savings Accounts (UISA) system and analyses whether it can indeed serve as a model for other developing countries.
- Maldonado, L., & Prieto, J. (2015). Determinants of Poverty Dynamics in Chile and the Role of Temporal Persistence: Analysis the Panel Casen 2006-2009 using the Event History Method. Economía y Política Review. 2(2), pp. 5-39.El artículo examina las dinámicas de la pobreza en Chile utilizando métodos de análisis de historia de eventos para tasas de salida y reentrada en la pobreza con datos de la Encuesta Panel Casen para el período 2006-2009. Los resultados indican que existe una significativa movilidad desde y hacia la pobreza. Más de un tercio de las personas cayó en dicho estatus social al menos por un año durante el período bajo evaluación. Las dinámicas de la pobreza en Chile también se caracterizarían por la influencia del tiempo de permanencia en dicha condición y por la importancia de la estructura sociodemográfica de los hogares y de la colocación de éstos en el mercado del trabajo para las salidas y reentradas en privación de recursos económicos. Estos resultados sugieren la importancia de la implementación de programas públicos que aminoren las caídas en pobreza de determinados grupos sociales y que provean de vías laborales para salir de ella.
- Brain, I., Prieto, J., & Sabatini, F., (2010). Living in Slums: A way to obtain the social housing or a location strategy to face vulnerability?. Eure Journal. 36 (109), pp. 111-141. ISI.Con base en una encuesta comparativa a asentamientos irregulares y conjuntos de "vivienda social" de la Región Metropolitana de Santiago, caracterizamos la decisión de vivir en estos "campamentos" como orientada a combinar dos objetivos generalmente excluyentes: mejorar la localización dentro de la ciudad y acceder a una vivienda formal en propiedad. El que los campamentos se sigan recreando a pesar de la masiva producción de unidades subsidiadas por el Estado, y el que la mayoría de sus residentes no estén bajo la línea de la pobreza, avalan esta conclusión. Los campamentos no calzan con la idea común de estar formados por grupos de hogares pobres que han ocupado ilegalmente un suelo como única alternativa residencial y como forma de acceder a la "casa propia". Esta realidad, insospechada para muchos, representa un desafío a las actuales políticas habitacionales que tienden a aglomerar la vivienda social en la periferia urbana y a formar vastos distritos urbanos socialmente homogéneos o segregados donde está anidando el fenómeno del gueto.
- Denis, A., Prieto, J., & Zubizarreta, J. R. (2007). Poverty Dynamics in Chile: evidences for the years 1996, 2001 and 2006. Persona y Sociedad. Vol. XXI (3), pp. 9-30.La pobreza es un fenómeno dinámico: los pobres no son pobres todo el tiempo y los no pobres no están a salvo de caer en esta condición. Para estudiar la pobreza dando cuenta de este dinamismo, es necesario contar con datos longitudinales o datos de panel. Con datos de la Encuesta Panel CASEN 1996, 2001, 2006, la principal encuesta de hogares tipo panel de Chile, en este trabajo analizamos la dinámica de la pobreza en Chile en el período 1996-2006, cuantificándola e identificando sus determinantes. En 1996 encontramos que las personas de los primeros seis deciles de la distribución de ingresos presentan una tendencia sistemática a caer en la pobreza, mientras que en 2001 la pobreza alcanzó a los tres primeros deciles. Esto evidencia un considerable dinamismo en torno a la línea de la pobreza, oculto para los datos de corte transversal. Este dinamismo sugiere que las políticas basadas en indicadores estáticos presentarían importantes problemas de exclusión o inclusión. En el análisis de los determinantes de las salidas y caídas de la pobreza en general, encontramos escasas variables significativas en los ajustes para ambos quinquenios. Ello da cuenta de la complejidad del fenómeno de la pobreza y de la heterogeneidad del grupo de personas afectas a ella.
- Why does economic pessimism remain so high in Latin America? Revisiting the question during the 2001-2023 period. (con Noam Titelman).R&R
- More Than a Bad Job: Precarious Work as a Multidimensional Capability Failure.Enviado
- Automation without a Right Turn? Technological Anxiety, Economic Insecurity and Democratic Attitudes in Latin America (con Noam Titelman).Enviado
- Debt, Age, and the Conversion Gap in Subjective Economic Hardship: Evidence from Chile (con Gonzalo Torres).Enviado
- How does vulnerability to poverty affect subjective well-being? A secure middle-class perspective for Chile (con Gonzalo Torres).En curso
- Multidimensional Inequality in Latin America (con el equipo de la CEPAL).En curso
- Economic Insecurity, Not Inequality? Explaining Social Protest Participation in Chile (con Benjamín Lang).En curso
- Measuring and Valuing Subjective Well-Being: Applying the WELLBY Framework to Chile (con Camila Herrera).En curso
- Earnings volatility in Latin America: evidence from administrative data. (con Verónica Amarante, Paula Carrasco, Markus Nabernegg y Xavier Jara Tamayo).En curso
- The cumulative effects of macroeconomic performance on political and economic attitudes: evidence from Latin America (con Noam Titelman).En curso
Tesis doctoral
- Prieto, J. (2020). New approaches to measuring economic and social well-being in Chile. PhD thesis (Doctor of Philosophy), Department of Social Policy, London School of Economics and Political Science.I propose three new measures of social and economic well-being using different approaches. These measures are applied to Chile using two household surveys: the Panel CASEN and the Financial Survey.
First, I use an income positions persistence approach to estimate the persistence of households in different positions of the income distribution. The application of this measure enables us to understand the mechanisms that explain why those at the lower end of the income distribution have a low probability of moving up (sticky floor), and those at the higher end of the income distribution have less chance of moving down (glass floor). The results show that income mobility is particularly high for all groups in the income distribution.
Second, I use a low-income dynamic approach to estimate degrees of vulnerability to poverty. This measure enables us to obtain two vulnerability lines that measure the risk of non-poor households falling into poverty in the next period. This enables the identification of three types of households: those with high, moderate and low vulnerability. The latter corresponds to the income-secure middle class. The results show that vulnerability to poverty affects a significant part of the population that exited poverty in the last decade.
Third, I use a multidimensional approach to measure economic insecurity at the household level. I build an index that combines four indicators of economic insecurity that cause stress and anxiety: unexpected economic shocks, unprotected employment, over-indebtedness and asset poverty. In this way, the index offers a measure that directly relates economic uncertainty to stress due to the lack of social protection and household buffers to face an unexpected economic shock. The results show that households in the entire income distribution, even in the highest income deciles groups, are affected by economic insecurity.
Capítulos de libro
- Prieto, J. (2025). Vulnerabilidad a la pobreza en Chile: hacia una medición oficial y políticas preventivas in Matus, T. & Urquiza, A. (eds.), El tiempo lento de Chile. Publicaciones Universidad de Chile.La vulnerabilidad a la pobreza se entiende como la probabilidad de que hogares actualmente no pobres caigan en situación de pobreza en el futuro debido a shocks o caídas en sus ingresos. Estos eventos pueden ser de distinta naturaleza: pérdida del empleo, enfermedades o accidentes de miembros del hogar, cambios en la composición familiar (como la separación o el fallecimiento de un sostenedor económico), fenómenos climáticos adversos (sequías, inundaciones) o crisis económicas generales. La magnitud del impacto depende de la existencia de mecanismos de protección. Cuando un hogar carece de ahorros, cobertura de seguridad social (por ejemplo, seguros de desempleo o de salud), acceso al crédito o redes de apoyo familiar, su vulnerabilidad aumenta de manera significativa. En tales casos, incluso un shock relativamente acotado puede ser suficiente para empujar a un hogar de ingresos medios-bajos por debajo de la línea de pobreza.
- Prieto, J. (2021). Poverty Traps and Affluence Shields: modelling the persistence of income position in Chile in Research on Economic Inequality, Vol 29. Emerald Publishing Limited. 169-207.In the last two decades, inequality has been changing in different regions of the world. While most of the OECD countries have experienced an increase in income inequality, in regions such as Latin America, though the starting point was much higher than in the OECD, income inequality has decreased (Amarante & Colacce, 2018; OECD, 2015). These increases or decreases in inequality can occur in different income mobility contexts. For example, a country may have a simple stretch or shrinkage of the ends of the income distribution where households remain in the same position within the distribution. However, longitudinal data have shown that changes in inequality are explained, in relative terms, by the movement of households up and down within the income distribution (Fields, 2008; Jäntti & Jenkins, 2015).
- Maldonado, L., Prieto, J. and Feres, J. C. (2018). The working poor in Chile during the period 1990-2013 in Handbook of Research on In-Work Poverty. Edward Elgar Publishing. 395-415.In the last decade, in-work poverty has been increasingly debated in the United States and Europe. Nevertheless, this issue has not attracted a great deal of attention in other regions of the world in terms of the literature on combating poverty (Fields, 2012). In Latin America, academic research into the labor market and poverty has appeared during the last few years. A common point of view among these studies is that access to regular employment has proven to be the most secure route out of poverty (Perry et al., 2006). However, to the best of our knowledge, scholars have not considered the fact that the existence of in-work poverty calls for a critical evaluation of this point of view in Latin American countries.
Libros como editor
- Prieto, J. (ed.) (2012) Revista Persona y Sociedad (edición especial con artículos elaborados con datos de 6 encuestas desarrolladas por el Observatorio Social, Universidad Alberto Hurtado), vol. XXI Nº1.
- Prieto, J. y Karina Soto (coed.) (2012) En Chile todos contamos: segundo catastro nacional de personas en situación de calle. Colección Observatorio Social. Editorial Universidad Alberto Hurtado.
- Rivadeneira, M., Brain, I. y Prieto, J. (coed.) (2004) Historias de Campamentos. Centro de Investigación Social, Fundación TECHO. El Mercurio—Aguilar Editorial.
- Titelman, N. & Prieto, J. (2026). The cumulative effects of economic growth on political and economic attitudes: evidence from Latin America. SocArXiv preprint, OSF (PDF) · OSF.
- Prieto, J. (2024). Degrees of vulnerability to poverty: A low-income dynamics approach for Chile. Disponible como: LSE Social Policy Working Paper 01-24 (PDF); LSE III Working Paper 129 (PDF); ECINEQ Working Paper 2024-666 (PDF). The Journal of Economic Inequality, 22, 1069–1107.También publicado
- Prieto, J. (2021). Poverty traps and affluent shields: Modelling the persistence of income position in Chile. Disponible como: LSE Social Policy Working Paper 01-21 (PDF); LSE III Working Paper 66 (PDF); ECINEQ Working Paper 2021-576 (PDF). Research on Economic Inequality, Vol 29, Emerald Publishing Limited, 169–207.También publicado
- Prieto, J. (2021). A Multidimensional Approach to Measuring Economic Insecurity: The Case of Chile. Disponible como: LSE III Working Paper 70 (PDF); ECINEQ Working Paper 2021-591 (PDF). Social Indicators Research, 163(2), 823–855.También publicado
- Brain, I. & Prieto, J. (2018). Understanding Changes in the Geography of Opportunity: The Case of Santiago, Chile. Disponible como: Lincoln Institute of Land Policy Working Paper WP18IB2 (PDF); LSE III Working Paper 63 (PDF). Cities, Vol 114 (2021).También publicado
- Prieto, J. & Brain, I. (2018). Daily mobility and changes in the geography of opportunities in the city of Santiago: What has happened to families living bad located? Working paper WP18JP1SP. Lincoln Institute of Land Policy LILP. Cambridge, MA. (PDF)
- Prieto, J. (2015). Location preferences in low-income families: Residential mobility and housing market in the city of Santiago de Chile, 2002 - 2011. Working paper WP15JP1SP. Lincoln Institute of Land Policy LILP. Cambridge, MA. (PDF)
- Brain, I., Prieto, J., Sabatini, F. & Celhay, P. (2009). Living in Slums: Residential Location Preferences in Santiago, Chile. Landlines Journal. Vol. 21, Nº4. October. Lincoln Institute of Land Policy. Cambridge, MA. (PDF). Eure Journal, 36(109), pp. 111–141.También publicado
Proyectos en Chile
- 2025-2028 Investigador postdoctoral, Economic (In)Security from the Perspective of Social Protection: A Missing (but Necessary) Dimension for a Comprehensive Approach to Human Development. Financiado por Fondecyt.
Proyectos internacionales
- 2020-2022 Investigador postdoctoral, Measuring the Quality of Employment (QoE) in Middle-Income Countries. Financiado por British Academy.
- 2016-2017 Investigador, Changes in the geography of opportunity in the City of Santiago, Chile: towards a more inclusive city?. Financiado por Lincoln Institute of Land Policy LILP.
- 2014-2015 Investigador principal (IP), Daily Mobility of Families at Risk of Falling into Poverty in Santiago, Chile: Anchored by Housing Location and Forced to Move around the City. Financiado por LILP.
- 2013-2014 Investigador, Location Preference of Low Income Households: Housing Mobility and Housing Market in the city of Santiago, Chile. Financiado por LILP.
- 2012-2013 IP, Effects of localization in poverty dynamics in Santiago city, Chile. Financiado por LILP.
- 2008-2010 IP, Living in Slums: A way to obtain the social housing or a location strategy to face vulnerability?. Financiado por LILP.