Registro Social de Hogares — Chile's algorithmic social-benefit targeting system

Introduced in 2016 to replace the universally criticised CAS in-person survey card, the RSH is Chile's centralised algorithmic socioeconomic classification system, fusing self-reported household data with seven administrative registries (tax authority SII, social security AFP/IPS, vehicle registry, property register, health fund FONASA/Isapre, education spending and child-support records) to produce a welfare-band score via a proxy means test.

The RSH score determines eligibility for every means-tested programme in Chile — housing subsidies, education grants, healthcare co-payments and emergency cash transfers. Since May 2023, scores are recalculated biweekly (previously monthly). The system is listed on Chile's official public AI Algorithm Repository (algoritmospublicos.cl) with documented inputs, methodology and update schedule; households may request supervised corrections, and unpaid alimony is no longer counted as income following a 2022 rule change.

As of 2023, the RSH covers 8,994,018 households (17,136,753 people, 85.6% of Chile's population). The November 2023 recalibration, based on the Casen 2022 household survey, reclassified 1,686,507 households, with 779,000 households newly entering the 40% and 60% most-vulnerable tiers and becoming eligible for benefits previously denied to them.

Known limitation: informal-economy earnings are structurally under-captured, creating a known inclusion-error bias for precarious workers.