GINI DP 79: A Critical Evaluation of the EU 2020 Poverty and Social Exclusion Target: An Analysis of EU-SILC 2009

Bertrand Maître, Brian Nolan and Christopher Whelan

GINI Discussion Papers from AIAS, Amsterdam Institute for Advanced Labour Studies

Abstract: As part of its 2020 Strategy adopted, the EU has set a number of headline targets including one for poverty and social exclusion reduction. Our analysis in this paper suggests that, in focusing on the union of the three chosen component indicators, cross-nationally we are not comparing like with like and the case for aggregating the indicators to produce a multidimensional indicator is seriously undermined. In relation to the measurement of deprivation, the development of this target was conducted on the basis of information available in the European Union Survey of Income and Living Conditions (EU-SILC) that was generally recognised to be less than satisfactory. More recently the introduction of a special module on material deprivation as part of EU-SILC 2009 provides an opportunity to explore the consequences of critical choices in relation to the deprivation index utilised and the threshold employed. In order to deal with problems relating to the fact that neither the union or intersection of the current dimensions proves to be satisfactory, we explored a consistent poverty approach using both the EU severe material deprivation 4+ threshold and a 3+ threshold and nationally relative threshold based on an alternative basic deprivation index. Employing the EU material deprivation index, extreme deprivation is largely abolished in more affluent member states. A purely relative measure produces much higher rates in these countries but leads to a compression of rates across countries. The basic deprivation 3+ index largely manages to avoid both of these problems.Understanding the scale of between country differences while continuing to be able identify those groups within countries who should remain the focus of attention is an indispensable part of any attempt to develop EU poverty and targets. The absence of coherent principles underlying the measurement process is likely to undermine the stated objectives of achieving an effective way of communicating in a political environment, and a necessary tool in order to monitor national situations.

Date: 2013-08
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (5)

Downloads: (external link)
https://www1.feb.uva.nl/aias/79-4-1-2.pdf (application/pdf)
Our link check indicates that this URL is bad, the error code is: 500 Can't connect to www1.feb.uva.nl:443 (No such host is known. )

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:aia:ginidp:79

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in GINI Discussion Papers from AIAS, Amsterdam Institute for Advanced Labour Studies Nieuwe Prinsengracht 130, 1018 VZ Amsterdam. Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Wiemer Salverda ( this e-mail address is bad, please contact ).