Decomposing Poverty in Hard Times: Greece 2007-2016

Eirini Andriopoulou, Eleni Kanavitsa and Panos Tsakloglou

GreeSE – Hellenic Observatory Papers on Greece and Southeast Europe from Hellenic Observatory, LSE

Abstract: The Greek economic crisis resulted in a decline in household disposable income by more than 40%. Even though all population groups lost income in absolute terms, some were substantially more severely hit by the crisis. The paper examines the effect of the crisis on the population shares, the mean incomes and the level of poverty of various population groups using SILC data for the period 2007-2016. The population is partitioned according to four criteria: socioeconomic group of the household head, presence of unemployed individuals in the household, age of the population member and household type. When ÒanchoredÓ poverty lines and distribution-sensitive poverty indices are employed the level of poverty rises to incredibly high levels. When the poverty lines used are ÒrelativeÓ, the poverty rate does not change substantially but when distribution-sensitive indices are used the increase in poverty is very substantial. The most interesting results are related to the changes in the structure of poverty. The crisis was associated with a very substantial increase in unemployment. Unemployment protection in Greece was inadequate while there was no Òbenefit of last resortÓ. As a result, the relative position of households with unemployed members (and, especially, with unemployed heads) deteriorated sharply, while their contribution to aggregate poverty skyrocketed. Unlike what is often claimed in the Greek public discourse, the relative position of pensioner-headed households improved, although they also experienced a considerable decline in their living standards.

Keywords: Greece; Poverty; Decomposition analysis; Crisis (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2020-06
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (2)

Published

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.lse.ac.uk/Hellenic-Observatory/Assets/D ... ers/GreeSE-No149.pdf (application/pdf)

Related works:
Working Paper: Decomposing Poverty in hard times: Greece 2007-2016 (2020)
Working Paper: Decomposing poverty in hard times: Greece 2007-2016 (2020)
Working Paper: Decomposing Poverty in Hard Times: Greece 2007-2016 (2020)
Working Paper: Decomposing poverty in hard times: Greece 2007-2016 (2020)
Journal Article: Decomposing Poverty in Hard Times: Greece 2007-2016 (2019)
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:hel:greese:149

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in GreeSE – Hellenic Observatory Papers on Greece and Southeast Europe from Hellenic Observatory, LSE Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Vassilis Monastiriotis ().