Global health. The current scenario and future perspectives

47 according to calculations from the Household Financial Survey of the Central Bank of Chile. Personal wealth is the sum of physical wealth, such as properties, land, vehicles, artwork, gold and jewelry, and financial wealth, including stocks, bonds, bank deposits and other financial assets. Net personal wealth is the total gross wealth minus the individual’s liabilities (debts). An empirical regularity across Latin America and around the world is that wealth inequality (Gini coefficient of personal wealth) is substantially higher than income inequality (Gini for wages and salaries, interest, dividends, rents). Therefore, a comprehensive analysis of inequality must incorporate not only income distribution but also wealth distributio n 7 . The following factors contribute to and reflect the high and persistent economic inequality in Chile: a) a high concentration in the ownership of physical and financial assets by small economic elites and productive and financial conglomerates, b) the weakness and atomization of labor organizations, which prevent them from negotiating higher wages and receiving a fair share of companies’ productivity gains, c) the absence of a progressive tax system that proportionally taxes higher incomes more, d) the absence of a wealth tax for high-net-worth individuals, e) the existence of a highly privatized and stratified education system, where access to quality education is largely determined by the socioeconomic level of families (ability to pay), which leads to persistent disparities in public education. Historically, from the 1940s to the 1970s, access to public education was an equalizing mechanism of opportunities and upward mobility in Chilean society, f) the high profits earned by companies operating in sectors with limited competition (banking, private pension funds, private healthcare insurance, natural resources). g) a segmented health sector in which private health providers (Isapres) that serve around 15 percent of the population co-exist with a public health system (Fonasa) for the remaining 85 percent of population. Latin America: A Brief Historical Perspective Latin America is a region that has maintained its ratios of per capita income 7 Available estimates show that the income Gini for Latin America and the Caribbean c. 2015-2018 was 0,46 while the net wealth Gini was close to 0,80. In turn, the income share of the top 1 percent was 20 percent (Latin American average) and the wealth share of the top 1 percent was 35-45 percent for those years.