Revolutionary Road?

The policies of the Chávez administration have served to help lower poverty, increase access to necessary social services, and better distribute Venezuela's resources. But more than trust the numbers, one can turn to public opinion to verify this. According to a 2007 Latinobarómetro report, Venezuelans rank their country among the most democratic in the region, second only to Uruguay. On a number of measures -- equality between the sexes, the protection of private property, equality of opportunity, solidarity with the poor, social security, employment opportunities, and even income distribution -- respondents ranked Venezuela highest in the region. When asked how their families' economic situations would be in 12 months, 61 percent of the Venezuelan people said "much better" or "a bit better," higher than the figure for Brazil (60 percent) and the regional average (46 percent). On education and health services, 64 percent and 74 percent, respectively, expressed their satisfaction.

None of this is to say that the Venezuelan government is perfect, much less that it does not face ongoing challenges. It does, as Chávez recognized after his December 2007 referendum loss. One of the main challenges, inflation, has already decreased this year, and food shortages have similarly abated. More important, Venezuela will continue growing its economy, with eight percent expansion expected for 2008.

Trying to argue that Venezuela's economic growth and social gains are all a myth sustained by effective international lobbying and public relations both underestimates the intelligence of the Venezuelan people and does a grave disservice to the facts. Contributors to Foreign Affairs may not like Chávez personally, but they should not keep looking for unsubstantiated reasons to attack Venezuela's efforts to create a vibrant and equitable democracy.

RODRIGUEZ REPLIES

Ambassador Bernardo Alvarez Herrera argues that I have ignored evidence showing the Chávez administration's commitment to the poor and the effectiveness of its social policies, and he cites several indicators that would appear to counter the central arguments of my article. Let us look closely at each of his claims. The ambassador argues that the share of social spending has increased during the Chávez administration from 38.6 percent in 1997 to 44 percent in 2007. However, it is important to be careful about what is meant by "social spending." The growth cited by the ambassador was driven by a substantial increase in the payment of pensions, whose share of total government spending doubled, from 6 percent to 12 percent. There is an extensive literature documenting the regressivity of pensions in countries such as Venezuela, where the poor do not participate in the formal economy and thus are not beneficiaries of the social security system. This is why I restricted myself to the categories of spending that can truly be argued to be mainly directed at the poor: education, health, and housing. The share of spending devoted to these categories has been essentially unchanged during the Chávez administration.

Ambassador Alvarez also argues that I have ignored the large amount of social spending carried out by the state-owned oil company, PDVSA, which totaled $13.3 billion in 2006. Again, it is necessary to be careful about definitions. PDVSA categorizes all of its spending on the direct support of government initiatives as "social development expenditures," regardless of the type of projects it supports. The bulk of these expenditures do not go to programs that under any reasonable definition would be described as pro-poor. The two largest single items of expenditure reported under this category in PDVSA's financial statements are $3.2 billion given to the Ministry of Finance for debt restructuring and $1.1 billion given to the Ministry of Defense. Only 26.8 percent of PDVSA's "social development expenditures" went to support education, health, and housing programs. This is roughly the same percentage spent by the central government on such programs, confirming my claim that the data do not show that pro-poor spending is being prioritized by the Chávez administration any more so than it was by past administrations.

The ambassador also shows that school attendance rates have increased since Chávez reached office and that a large number of people have benefited from the government's Barrio Adentro health initiative. Both of these assertions are correct, but neither provides evidence that this administration has done more to help the poor than its predecessors did. The increase in school attendance observed since 1998 simply continues a long-term trend of improvement. Between 1975 and 1998, attendance rates for students between the ages of 6 and 14 increased from 77 percent to 94.4 percent; since 1998, that increase has continued, with the rate reaching 96.2 percent in 2006. (To its credit, the Chávez government maintained the previous administration's program Escuelas Integrales, rechristened Escuelas Bolivarianas, which appears to have been vital in further improving attendance rates.)