Abstract

Regional Disparities and Stability of Job Quality in Chile: 1998-2006 In this study, a job quality index is constructed; whose components are the wages of workers, the working conditions, the access to social security and the hours of work. Through this index, the trends of job quality for all the regions of Chile are measured for the years 1998, 2000, 2003 and 2006. The results show that job quality is, in general, statistically different among regions, but the relative position of the regions tends to be stable across time. Differences were obtained in quality of job in favor of men as compared to women, and between the older-adult and young-adult groups, but there were no differences between young-adult and adults groups. Finally, there is a clear positive relationship between educational level and quality of job, in all the regions and for all the years studied.