In this study, we measure the area-specific poverty in the European Union (EU). To this end, we measure poverty at the sub-national level in two ways: (i) using the EU nomenclature of territorial units (NUTS 1 mostly); (ii) using different with respect to the degree of urbanisation areas within countries. The measurement of poverty is based on the Multidimensional Poverty Index (UN MPI) by Alkire and Santos (2010, 2013). With the data from the European Union Survey on Income and Living Conditions (EU SILC), we formulate the Index of Multidimensional Poverty at the regional level, namely the Multidimensional Poverty Index (MPI-reg). The MPI-reg framework comprises three dimensions — health, education, and standard of living — quantified by three sub-indexes: Multidimensional Poverty in Health Index (MPI–H), Poverty in Education Index (MPI–E) and Multidimensional Poverty in Living Standards Index (MPI–L), respectively.
In 2012 the MPI-reg was computed for 24 EU countries. Unfortunately, due to data unavailability calculations for Belgium, Ireland, the Netherlands, and Slovenia were not executed. However, it was the first time when poverty was assessed for Croatia. Our results show that the level of poverty in the EU ranges from 0.5 % to 13-15 %, with Denmark and Sweden having unequivocally the lowest share of poor people and Latvia, Bulgaria and Romania, having the largest share of poor people. It must be noted, however, that generally, comparing to the situation in 2011, poverty level decreased. The only considerable exception from this reasoning is Portugal, where the MPI-reg increased (1.3 pp.). On the other hand, the most significant decrease in the MPI-reg was recorded in Latvia, Bulgaria, and Romania, i.e., in the least affluent countries with respect to the MPI-reg.
We also see that there is a positive relationship between the stratification level and all adjusted headcount ratios, headcount ratios and intensity of poverty scores. This positive relationship implies that there are countries where there is small stratification with respect to poverty (e.g. Sweden, Denmark, the Czech Republic and Finland) and countries, usually poor ones (e.g. Romania, Bulgaria and Lithuania), where considerable stratification with respect to poverty occurs. In general, in the lowest and moderately low scoring countries, the worst situation with respect to poverty is observed in sparsely populated areas, and the best situation occurs in densely populated areas. On the other hand, in the best scoring countries, poverty is relatively higher in the densely populated areas compared to the less well-populated areas.
The results confirm our previously published findings (see Weziak-Bialowolska & Dijkstra 2014) that the European Union regions are strongly diversified with respect to poverty. This implies that considerable within-country differences are indicated. Therefore, relying only on countrywide estimates may be misleading when properly assessing the relative standing of a region with respect to poverty.
WEZIAK-BIALOWOLSKA Dorota Maria;
DIJKSTRA Lewis;
2014-08-26
Publications Office of the European Union
JRC91000
978-92-79-39645-8 (print),
978-92-79-39644-1,
1018-5593 (print),
1831-9424 (online),
EUR 26793,
OP LB-NA-26793-EN-C (print),
OP LB-NA-26793-EN-N (online),
https://publications.jrc.ec.europa.eu/repository/handle/JRC91000,
10.2788/10197 (print),
10.2788/10135 (online),
