Abstract

The study of poverty and wealth attribution has played a central role in the literature on the justification of social inequalities. Research on this topic has examined the extent to which individualistic versus structural reasons are used to explain why some people reach advantaged or disadvantaged positions in comparison to the rest of the population. This article attempts to explain how these reasons have changed over time in Chile, which has experienced vast economic transformation yet has maintained income inequality. From two national surveys produced in 1996 and 2015, descriptive results show that individualistic attributions for poverty and wealth (e.g., personal initiative) have increased and structural reasons (e.g., unemployment, economic policy) have declined. Latent class analysis (LCA) offers a second reading of the data, demonstrating that the decline of structural attributions is related to an increase in people choosing both individualistic and structural reasons for explaining poverty and wealth. Those changes in attribution patterns are discussed within the frame of cultural and economic transformation in Chilean society.