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Measuring differences in economic standard of living between immigrant communities in Italy

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Abstract

Measuring differences in the economic standard of living of between natives and other ethnic groups can inform us about the relative disadvantages and inequalities within Italian society. Despite the importance of this question, the measurement of this gap is not an easy task because, when using the usual design-based approach to survey sampling inference, the available micro-data lack sufficient sample size for the majority of immigrant communities needed to obtain reliable estimates. In this paper, we show that small area estimation (SAE) techniques can be applied in a fruitful way to avoid this issue. In particular, we use an approach based on M-quantile regression for estimating the economic standard of living in each community in Italy. Our findings highlight economic disparities between natives and other ethnic groups and suggest the need to adopt specific policies that target the most vulnerable immigrant communities and are designed to improve their economic standard of living.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Dipartimento di Studi Aziendali e Quantitativi, Università di Napoli Parthenope, Via Generale Parisi 13, 80132, Naples, Italy

    Francesco Schirripa Spagnolo & Antonella D’Agostino

  2. Dipartimento di Economia e Management, Università degli Studi di Pisa, Via Ridolfi, 10, 56124, Pisa, Italy

    Nicola Salvati

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  1. Francesco Schirripa Spagnolo
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  2. Antonella D’Agostino
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  3. Nicola Salvati
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Correspondence to Antonella D’Agostino.

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Appendix 1

Appendix 1

Table 4 Sample size and descriptive statistics by sampled community
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Schirripa Spagnolo, F., D’Agostino, A. & Salvati, N. Measuring differences in economic standard of living between immigrant communities in Italy. Qual Quant 52, 1643–1667 (2018). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11135-017-0542-3

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