Social expenditure in Chile: Its organization and regional impact in the late 1980s.

Irarrazaval, Ignacio (1990) Social expenditure in Chile: Its organization and regional impact in the late 1980s. PhD thesis, London School of Economics and Political Science.

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Abstract

The thesis aims to analyse how Social Services are organised and financed in Chile, with a special focus on the regional impact of social policies. In the first place, the study concentrates on describing the procedures and strategies that each social ministry or sector, (Health, Education, Housing, Social Security) has for financing its programmes. This makes possible for the first time in the Chilean case an intersectoral view of the organization of social services. In order to address this issue it was necessary to investigate the formal sectoral organization and its functions. Special emphasis is given to the analysis of the ministerial budgeting and planning procedures discussing its links and problems. The study also gauges the discretionary powers that the regional social services have; this was approached through the analysis of different models of decentralization and government functions. To obtain information in this area, interviews were undertaken with social sector planning and budgeting specialists. Since 1975, the Government has advocated a new "regionalization" policy, aimed at decentralising the power of national Government, eliminating regional inequalities, and reducing poverty. In the second place, therefore, the study analyses the patterns of the regional allocation of social expenditures testing its relation to regional well-being, urbanization and needs. To address this issue it was necessary to define some standard criteria to allocate the actual social expenditure figures. However, to obtain the social expenditure figures it was necessary to study the inter- and intra-ministerial transfers and price indexes. Estimates of regional social expenditures per capita are produced for the first time for Chile; they cast light on the present pattern of regional allocation of social expenditures. These figures are then compared with regional social indicators of need in order to determine the relationship between these variables. The results are presented and conclusions drawn.

Item Type:	Thesis (PhD)
Uncontrolled Keywords:	Sociology, Public and Social Welfare, Latin American Studies, History, Latin American
Sets:	Collections > ProQuest Etheses
URI:	http://etheses.lse.ac.uk/id/eprint/1222

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