The end of strata, the beginning of the Universal Income Registry

January 23, 2024

Petro’s Government presented the draft Decree to implement the Universal Income Registry. We tell you what are the phases of the transition, how the self-declaration will work and what are the debates around the measure.

universal income registry, social housing, Más Colombia

Are you tired of being treated according to your strata? That is going to change with the new Universal Income Registry, the new mechanism proposed by the Government to target subsidies, programs and services of the State’s social offer. Here we tell you what it consists of and some of the debates it has sparked.

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From the strata to the Universal Income Registry

The Colombian Government, in its intention to modify the methodology used to identify the living conditions of the population, presented the draft decree that provides the legal basis for the transition from the current stratification to the Universal Income Registry, an instrument approved in the National Development Plan (2022-2026).

The Universal Income Registry, according to the government’s proposal, will allow for a clear distinction of the most vulnerable families and individuals, something that has not been possible with the stratification implemented until now, since the conditions of households in the same stratum are very different.

In other words, the Universal Income Registry “seeks to make an estimate of household income, so that we can know where they stand with respect to the income distribution of the entire Colombian society”. This was confirmed by Horacio Coral, Director of Social Development of the DNP.

According to the National Planning Department (DNP), the Universal Income Registry will guarantee state institutions access to more detailed information that will facilitate the targeting of social programs to the poorest and the optimization of social spending.

Colombian institutions exercising public functions will have to adopt the Universal Income Registry as the exclusive instrument for “targeting subsidies, programs, policies, plans, projects and services of the social offer”, says the proposed decree.

The phases of the transition

According to the proposed Decree, the transition from SISBEN to the Universal Income Registry will be carried out in three phases: conditioning, methodological development and implementation.

In the conditioning phase, the DNP will define the relevant sources of information and the operational and technical parameters for the self-reported information, which will make it possible to weigh the per capita income of the population identified in the Unified Household Registry. The process requires the management of the information compiled by national and territorial entities.

In the methodological development phase, the method for ordering and classifying the Universal Registry of Income will be determined on the basis of income analysis, a moment that requires the development of pilot tests that are already beginning to be carried out.

Finally, the implementation phase, which implies the adoption of the Universal Income Registry in all entities “that administer subsidies, programs, policies, plans, projects and services of the social offer”, according to the draft Decree, which allows adjusting its parameters and targeting criteria and guaranteeing the transit of the beneficiary population to the Universal Income Registry.

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Self-declaration of information for the Universal Income Registry

The starting point for the creation of the Universal Income Registry is the already existing Social Registry of Households (RSH), which collects information on Colombian citizens and residents from 40 national databases of public and private entities, according to the DNP website.

In cases where the person or household does not have valid socioeconomic information in the RSH, it is necessary “a self-declaration at least once (1) a year, according to the channels, mechanisms, parameters and periodicity established by the DNP”, says the proposed decree.

This mechanism will be understood as terminated from the individual declaration -referring to labor market, income and expenses- of all the members of the household under oath. This information will be subject to a verification process by the DNP.

Debates surrounding the Universal Income Registry

The implementation of the Universal Income Registry has debates. Lisandro Junco, former director of the DIAN, considers that the power that the DNP would have to access to the knowledge of the income of Colombians would violate the legal tax reserve of the same, according to his statements to El Heraldo.

Universidad Nacional professors, Mónica Uribe, and Diego Martínez, warn that the elimination of stratification could be counterproductive, since it provides valuable information on the socioeconomic disparities in the areas.

For his part, researcher Miguel Rodríguez believes that although the new methodology has the laudable purpose of focusing and improving the monitoring of the use of resources allocated to state social aid, it is clear that a considerable effort will be required in terms of coordination between various state entities, and so far no clear progress has been made in this regard.