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Paper short abstract:

aims to identify if persons with disabilities and their families are more likely to live in chronic poverty in Chile, Peru and Colombia

Paper long abstract:

Pinilla-Roncancio M, and Cedeno G.

Chronic poverty of persons with disabilities in Latin American countries.

Keywords: disability, poverty, Latin America

In Latin America and the Caribbean, more than 80 million people live with a disability, and although there is no official statistic, it is expected that persons living with disabilities face higher levels of poverty and are one of the groups that have been left behind from development. Colombia, Peru and Chile are high-middle-income countries. Although they still face important problems related to poverty, the three countries have shown a reduction in income poverty levels in the last years. According to National Statistics in Colombia, more than 4.5% of the population 5 years or older lives with disability, in Peru 5.2% and in Chile 17.6%, in the three countries, persons with disabilities are more likely to be outside the labour market, have lower levels of education, lower social and political participation and face high levels of exclusion. Although the evidence reveals that people with disabilities are one excluded and vulnerable group, in the three countries, this group has been ignored in social protection policies and programmes, and only Peru has a specific income transfer programme for persons with disabilities.

The analysis of poverty for persons with disabilities has been limited to understanding if this group has higher levels of poverty. Still, little evidence exists on the risk of chronic poverty for persons with disabilities and their families. In Latin America, studies have found that persons with disabilities present higher levels of multidimensional poverty, and in some cases, their levels of income poverty are significantly higher. However, to date there is no information on this group's chronic poverty risk in the region. This study aims to contribute to understanding chronic poverty for persons with disabilities in Peru, Chile and Colombia. We used the method designed by Lopez-Calva et al. (2022), where, using information from income and multidimensional poverty, it is possible to estimate the probability of being chronically poor. We used data from the Socioeconomic Conditions Survey from Chile (2021), the Quality-of-Life Survey 2022 in Colombia and the Household Income and Expenditure Survey (2021) in Peru. We estimated a biprobit model where the probability of being income and multidimensionally poor was estimated and the probability of being income and multidimensionally poor simultaneously. The result revealed that in the three countries, persons with disabilities and their families in general face higher levels of multidimensional poverty in comparison with persons without disabilities. In contrast, no significant differences in income poverty were found between persons with and without disabilities in Chile and Peru. In addition, when we analysed the probability of being chronically poor (thus income and multidimensionally poor), we found that persons with disabilities present a larger likelihood of being chronically poor than persons without disabilities in the three countries. In addition, women, persons with lower levels of education, living in rural areas and in households with a larger number of members, are more likely to be chronically poor in comparison with other households.

The results of this study provide evidence on the analysis of chronic poverty of persons with disabilities in Latin America. The findings revealed that persons with disabilities are more likely to be chronically poor. Therefore, there is a need to implement additional strategies to cover their needs and provide support to overcome this group's poverty. Given the lack of social

protection programmes covering this population, it is necessary to re-examine the need to design and implement these programmes in each of the countries included in this study.