Abstract
This paper contributes to the literature by analysing how poor the income poor are in European countries. Using data from the European Union Statistics on Income and Living Conditions, I go beyond average estimates of the intensity of poverty and analyse the distribution of individual-level poverty gaps in each country of interest. As a next step, I identify which personal and household characteristics predict how far away incomes of the poor fall from the poverty line. The results indicate that, in most European countries, half of the poor have income shortfalls not exceeding 30% of the poverty line whereas only a few percent of the poor have income deficits of 80% and more. The results also suggest that traditional poverty correlates (e.g. age, gender, educational background) are not always significantly associated with the size of normalised poverty gaps at the individual level, or the nature of these associations differs as compared to when the same characteristics are linked to the probability of being poor.
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Acknowledgements
This research has been supported by the third Network for the analysis of the European Union Statistics on Income and Living Conditions (Net-SILC3), funded by Eurostat and coordinated by the Luxembourg Institute of Socio-Economic Research. I would like to thank the Editor and two anonymous referees for the excellent feedback on previous versions of this paper. The paper has also benefited from the comments of Anne-Catherine Guio, Eric Marlier, Frank Vandenbroucke, Michael Wolfson, and participants of the conference on Poverty and Inclusive Development in Toulon, the 29th EALE conference in St. Gallen, 35th IARIW conference in Copenhagen, the 5th Luxembourg workshop of Household Finance and Consumption, the SimDeco Closing Workshop, the SEMILUX seminar in Luxembourg, and NET-SILC 3 conference in Athens. The European Commission bears no responsibility for the analyses and conclusions, which are solely those of the author.
Funding
This research has been supported by the third Network for the analysis of the European Union Statistics on Income and Living Conditions (Net-SILC3), funded by Eurostat.
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Kyzyma, I. How Poor Are the Poor? Looking beyond the Binary Measure of Income Poverty. J Econ Inequal 18, 525–549 (2020). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10888-020-09453-8
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10888-020-09453-8