Chile is a very attractive country for all expats, and if you want to know why, stick to the end of our list of best places to retire in Chile.
Compared to the rest of Latin America, Chile leads the region in multiple rankings including those related to human development, economic freedom and income per capita. If you want to spend your retirement days in one of the most stable and prosperous countries on the continent, then you should definitely have Chile as your top choice. The fact that Chileans don’t need a visa to enter the United States speaks enough of how much this country has accomplished. Also, according to the World Happiness Report from 2017, Chile is ranked on the 20th place. For example, the same report ranks the United States in 14th place, while the countries like France and Spain are behind Chile.
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Healthcare in Chile is provided by the government-operated public system and private insurance companies. According to the experiences of expats, the public healthcare system offers a good care, but it is overcrowded. Still, most of the expats turn to the private healthcare system that offers a better quality care and the waiting period is a lot shorter. According to OECD’s report about Health Policies in Chile, the country suffers from financial barriers when it comes to access to healthcare services. Among OECD countries, Chile ranks second (behind the United States) in out-of-pocket expenditures. This makes it harder for the low-income population to receive quality healthcare. Another worry is a low density of nurses and doctors in the country. There were 1.9 physicians and 5.6 nurses per 1,000 in 2013 in the country, both well below OECD average. Hospital bed per 1,000 population rate is 2.2, which puts Chile second to last in comparison to rest of OECD countries.
In terms of safety and security, Chile does look a lot better compared to other countries of the region. World Economic Forum ranked it on the 44th place in the world in their safety and security ranking. Chile 2017 Crime & Safety Report issued by the United States Overseas Security Advisory Council says that security environment in the country is moderately safe. When it comes to crimes against Americans, the most common were pickpocketing, vehicle thefts, and telephone scams. Violent crimes do occur, mostly in bigger cities like Santiago, but kidnappings and random shootings happen rarely. Theft related crimes saw an increase in 2016 compared to 2017, while residential burglaries and violent crimes went significantly down in the same period. In case you are not too disturbed with bad safety situations, you can check out our list of 10 best places to retire in Brazil as well.
Before we continue with the list of best places to retire in Chile, we should explain our methodology for creating it. We started by taking recommendations from multiple sources including Investopedia, Expat Exchange, and Trip Advisor among others, looking for places that were most often recommended as good retirement destinations and places to live in the country. After that, we ranked the countries and awarded points based on the average apartment rent cost (taken from Numbeo and various forums), hospital to population ratio (Google Maps), cheapest cost of one-way ticket to Miami, Fl from the nearest airport including the bus ticket to the airport (Google provided prices and Cheap Flights) and quality of urban life index rank obtained from Estudios Urbanos. After we summed up all the points into our IM score, we ended up with the complete list. We would like to add that hospital to population ratio should tell you (in theory) how many people are assigned to one hospital. Let’s now check out the list, shall we?
