Miracle of Chile - Performance On Economic and Social Indicators

Performance On Economic and Social Indicators

Amartya Sen, in his book Hunger and Public Action examines the performance of Chile in various economic and social indicators. He finds, from a survey of the literature on the field:

The so-called "monetarist experiment" which lasted until 1982 in its pure form, has been the object of much controversy, but few have claimed it to be a success...The most conspicuous feature of the post 1973 period is that of considerable instability...no firm and consistent upward trend (to say the least).

Nobel laureate and economist Gary Becker states that “Chile’s annual growth in per capita real income from 1985 to 1996 averaged a remarkable 5 percent, far above the rest of Latin America.” Since then the economy has averaged 3% annual growth in GDP.

Developments were very positive with regards to infant mortality and life expectancy—infant mortality rate fell so much that Chile achieved the lowest level of infant mortality in Latin America in the 1980s. Infant mortality rate in Chile fell from 76.1 per 1000 to 22.6 per 1000 from 1970 to 1985. In 1988, the military government passed a law making all abortion illegal, and the law remains in place today.

However, Sen claims that this improvement was not because of “free-market” policies but because of active public and state intervention. Chile had a very long tradition of public action for the improvement of childcare, which were largely maintained after the Pinochet coup:

... there is little disagreement as to what caused the observed improvement in the area of child health and nutrition...It would be hard to attribute the impressively steady decline in infant mortality ... (despite several major economic recessions) ... to anything else than the maintenance of extensive public support measures