Sorry for cross-posting.
Perhaps of interest to you.
Best wishes,
Orsolya Lelkes
Income Poverty and Social Exclusion
in the EU
Authors:
Orsolya Lelkes and Katrin Gasior
The aim of this Brief is to
estimate the degree of social exclusion at EU level, and to
identify the country clusters related to this, and also to present
the level and the trend of poverty at country level.
According to Europe2020 targets, the risk of exclusion is to be
measured by three indicators: at-risk-of-poverty, severe material
deprivation, and living in households with very low work
intensity. The EU-SILC for 2009 suggests that overall 113 million
people in the EU are at risk of exclusion according to at least
one of these indicators. Some 6.5 million people are deprived
according to all three indicators. On this basis, only a minority,
therefore, can be defined as suffering from severe cumulative
disadvantage.
We explored the natural grouping of the three indicators of social
exclusion at a country level across the EU. At a larger level, we
find a cluster of six East-European countries (Hungary, Poland,
Lithuania, Latvia, Bulgaria and Romania) and the rest of the EU.
On a more detailed level, we can identify four country groups.
The at-risk-of-poverty rate varies between 9% and 26% across EU
Member States. We find that the poverty gap is larger in countries
with higher rates of poverty. Between 2004 and 2008, the
proportion of population at-risk-of-poverty declined in the Czech
Republic, Ireland, Poland, and Slovakia. In contrast, the
proportion at-risk-of-poverty increased in Denmark, Finland,
Germany, Latvia, Luxembourg, and Sweden. We explored the
robustness of our results by the estimation of confidence
intervals for the poverty rates, and the use of alternative
threshold values.
Vienna, 2012
European Centre Policy Brief
Downloadable: http://www.euro.centre.org/detail.php?xml_id=1997
--
Orsolya Lelkes, PhD
European Centre for Social Welfare Policy and Research
Berggasse 17, A-1090 Vienna, Austria
Tel.: +43-1-319 4505-49
Fax: +43-1-319 4505-19
E-mail: [log in to unmask]
http://www.euro.centre.org/lelkes
