provides economic analysis and policy advice with the aim of promoting sustainable and equitable development. The Institute began operations in 1985 in Helsinki, Finland, as the first research and training centre of the United Nations University. Today it is a unique blend of think tank, research institute, and UN agency-providing a range of services from policy advice to governments as well as freely available original research. The Institute is funded through income from an endowment fund with additional contributions to its work programme from Finland, Sweden, and the United Kingdom as well as earmarked contributions for specific projects from a variety of donors.

Using decomposition methods, we analyse the role of the changing nature of work in explaining changes in employment, wage inequality, and job polarization in Chile from 1992 to 2017. Changes in occupational structure confirm a displacement of workers from low-skill occupations towards jobs demanding non-routine higher skills (professionals and technicians), and to jobs demanding routine manual and cognitive tasks (services and sales). Changes in occupational earnings have had an equalizing effect, with more substantial gains in favour of lower-skill occupations and also at the top of the skill premium. Inequality reductions since the 2000s are explained by a fall in earnings in the top percentiles of the distribution, which have been reallocated most noticeably around the median (2000–06) and the bottom 30 per cent (2006–17). Changes in the returns to education and the relocation of workers towards less-routine occupations have contributed to the inequality reduction.

Using decomposition methods, this chapter analyses the role of the changing nature of work in explaining changes in earning inequality and job polarization in Chile from 2000 to 2017. Changes in occupational structure confirm a displacement of workers from low-skill occupations towards jobs demanding non-routine higher skills (professionals and technicians), and jobs requiring routine manual and cognitive tasks (services and sales). Changes in occupational earnings have had an equalizing effect, with more substantial gains favouring lower-skill occupations, although without evidence of job polarization. Inequality reductions since the 2000s are explained by a fall in earnings in the top percentiles of the distribution, reallocated most noticeably around the median (2000–06) and the bottom 30 per cent (2006–17). The routine content of tasks explains an important part of changes in earnings variability, and it has contributed to improving wages. Average earnings across occupations have become less unequal over time, contributing to the overall decline in inequality.

Globally, the COVID-19 pandemic amplified the burden of household domestic and caregiving responsibilities unevenly for women. Confinement measures and the mandatory closure of nurseries and schools replaced in-classroom education with online education. For many households, working dynamics transitioned into remote or so-called ‘hybrid’ work, and suddenly, all household members were spending 24 hours a day at home. Using data from the first National Survey of Unpaid Home Care (ENCIC), this article offers an in-depth analysis of the gender distribution of unpaid domestic and care work within Chilean households during the COVID-19 pandemic. Our findings confirm an overload of unpaid work for women during the pandemic: they are the primary caregivers of children, teenagers and dependent people in over 70% of cases, and it is women who take over most domestic tasks at home, particularly the most time-consuming ones and those considered less pleasant by literature. Men tend to participate in shorter and simpler activities and tasks that involve leaving the house. There is no family composition where women have a higher probability than men to negotiate a lower domestic workload, not even when women are household heads. The gender disparity is even more pronounced in nuclear households, where women are 7.4 times more likely than their male partners to be responsible for household tasks and 2.9 times more likely to be in charge of caregiving. JEL Codes: B54, D13, J22, O54

This chapter describes the structural transformations that Chile has experienced over the past fifty years and how they have contributed, or not, to inclusive growth and genuine economic modernization from a historical perspective. The empirical analysis of the chapter shows a premature deindustrialization process since the 1970s, continuing to the present. We observe, in the transition from the import-substitution industrialization strategy to the outward-orientated neoliberal model of high inequality, a decline in the value-added shares of manufacturing and agriculture and a rise in services (mainly financial services, insurance, and real estate) with ups and downs in mining shares. These trends are more emphasized in employment shares, with the decline in relative employment generation in agriculture and manufacturing going directly to the services sector that now accounts for two-thirds of total employment in the economy. The trend of persistent deindustrialization and high inequality is worrisome and could negatively affect Chile’s ability to achieve structural transformations towards higher and more sophisticated levels of productive development and technological advancement.