Electricity access and distribution vary widely within the Metropolitan Region context regarding residents, socioeconomic levels, housing, and climate aspects that ultimately affect the quality and continuity of electricity services.

The Metropolitan Region has a surface area of 15,403 km2 and a projected population of 8,310,984 inhabitants in 2022, distributed across 52 municipalities based on the 2017 Census. It is the most densely populated region in the country, with an average of 539.6 inhabitants/km2. 96.3% of its residents live in urban settlements, while 3.7% reside in rural areas.

Concerning household poverty, the 2020 Casen Pandemic Survey^[1] indicated that 209,221 households live below the income poverty line^[2], representing 9% of the region's total population. These figures show a significant increase in indirect poverty over the last measurement in 2017. Meanwhile, multidimensional poverty^[3] represented 340,496 households in 2017^[4], or 20%.

Meanwhile, the statistics show that inequality in the distribution of income worsened alongside the poverty level. The Gini^[5] index observed in 2020 was 0.52, considering households' income in the Metropolitan Region, presenting a significant income gap. Homes in the highest decile showed gains 35.2 times higher than households in the first decile. At the national level, the region has the worst performance in terms of distribution of wealth, according to analysis based on the 2020 Casen statistics.

There is a quantitative housing deficit that, in 2020, reached almost 225,000 homes in the Metropolitan Region, according to a study by Fundación Vivienda and TECHO Chile. The number of informal regional settlements rose 53.3% from 2019 to 2021, and from 5,991 families living there, it grew to 19,444 (variation of 224.5%). 

Finally, the climate conditions in the Metropolitan Region are essential to consider for the quality and continuity of the electricity service. We know that extreme temperatures and water scarcity increases are territorial risk factors.

In 2021, Chile's Meteorological Department statistics indicated that the region had a 67% deficit in precipitation and was one of the four driest years recorded since 1914. This situation challenges the energy sector to design and implement concrete actions that favor the mitigation of the effects of the climate crisis today.

^[1] Given the methodological adaptation made to the Casen Pandemic Survey, we must compare these results carefully with poverty rates from previous years.

^[2] Income poverty reflects households that do not make enough income to consume a basic set of food and non-food items.

^[3] This index reflects the existence of multiple areas of lack, including education, healthcare, employment, housing, and social cohesion.

^[4] In 2020, the multidimensional poverty measurement did not occur due to the methodological adjustment to the Casen Pandemic Survey.

^[5] This is an economic measurement used to calculate income inequality among the territory's citizens, usually a country.