Government effectiveness, middle class and poverty in the EU: A dynamic multilevel analysis

Bruno, Bosco and Ambra, Poggi

No 344, Working Papers from University of Milano-Bicocca, Department of Economics

Abstract: Using the 2008-2011 EU-Statistics on Income and Living Conditions data, we implement a dynamic three-level model to analyze poverty persistence in 26 EU countries. Our aim is to understand why an individual experiencing poverty today is much more likely to experience it again. We innovate with respect to the existing literature by disentangling the effects of observed and unobserved heterogeneity at country level on the process that may generate poverty persistence. In particular, after controlling for socio-economic factors, including those related to qualitative and quantitative indicators of the welfare state, we analyze for the first time how the size of the middle class in each country affects current individual risk of poverty and its dynamics. Our findings show that the risk of poverty is negatively related to the quality of government activity to social expenditure and to the size of the middle class. Similarly, we show that the impact of past records on current poverty levels may be stronger (weaker) when institutional quality is low (high). This also indicates that good institutions and satisfactory social expenditure may help reducing the adverse current and future impact of experiencing poverty for any level of per capita income and middle class size. Policy implications are also discussed.

Keywords: Poverty; multilevel model; dynamics; government effectiveness; middle class (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: C23 C25 I30 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 27
Date: 2016-06-27, Revised 2016-06-27
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