The analyses of the evolution of inequalities in Peru rely generally on the comparison, year by year, of static indicators (Gini coefficients) that, besides their inherent ambiguities (as when Lorenz curves cross), do not allow us to answer the crucial question of whether poverty is a permanent characteristic of the same households or if it is a transitory phenomenon experienced by a great number of households. On the base of a panel of households built from the ENNIV surveys carried out by Cuánto, a more tinged image appears. Contrary to the idea of a highly hierarchical society, the mobility indicators for Metropolitan Lima suggest an important degree of fluidity between different economic strata and also between states of poverty and of non poverty between 1985 and 1996. The multinomial ordered probit econometric models explaining the probability of a household to go through different states indicates that household composition, the possession of assets and the education level are all decisive factors explaining transitions between different states of poverty and no-poverty.
