Social Stratification of Objective and Subjective Poverty in Uruguayan Households 2022-2023

The main objective of the thesis is to analyse the association between social class and objective poverty, measured by income, and subjective poverty, understood as a person's perception of whether his or her household is poor. This research problem is relevant because of the remarkable discrepancy in Uruguay between objective and subjective poverty: although only 10% of the population lives below the income poverty line, one third perceives their household as poor. This divergence suggests that the perception of poverty depends not only on economic factors, but also on social comparisons and personal experiences.
The paper proposes that social class, defined as people's position in the labour market, is a key variable that not only determines the objective conditions of poverty, but also influences subjective perceptions of well-being. For this analysis, we used Erikson and Goldthorpe's CARMIN model, adapted for Latin America by Solís, Chávez Molina and Cobos (2019), which considers labour market informality.
The central research questions include: How does the social class of the main income earner influence objective and subjective poverty, and what factors lead a person to perceive themselves as poor when they are not poor according to objective criteria?
To address these questions, data from the 2022 and 2023 Continuous Household Survey of Uruguay were analysed.The main findings include that the odds ratios of subjective poverty are associated with social class, where those in formal occupations and with greater social protection have a lower chance of considering their household to be poor. Thus, the self-employed and informal workers have the highest objective and subjective vulnerability.