Ricerc@Sapienza

There is a documented significant mismatch between poverty indirectly measured using a monetary, and direct measures focusing on material deprivation (MD). The latter is regarded as a direct method of poverty measurement. This mismatch largely prevented the implementation of focused social policies since the target of the policy is often "muddy".
The main goal of the project is to identify and develop new measures and models for material deprivation. It is part of the more general problem of measurement of well-being in a multi-dimensional and inter-temporal perspective.
The main contribution of the project is both methodological and empirical. Methodologically we plan to develop a measure of material deprivation in a dynamic latent state modelling framework that classifies the population by deprivation status without resorting to arbitrarily specified thresholds. This extends in the discrete space previous results. Classification corresponds to membership to a latent deprivation status. Each individual is not identified with certainty but through an estimated posterior probability of belonging to the deprivation status. Our proposed approach addresses some issues that so far limited the operativeness of MD measurement. The project also aims at assessing the item discriminant validity, in terms of deprivation measurement, by identifying the most discriminant indicators among a plausible set. We plan to overcome the potential issue of equally weighted items by a configuration of a deprivation score with country-specific optimal weighting.
The analysis of the statistical information available in the European Union is also a key element of the project. Using the longitudinal component of the EU-Statistics on income and living conditions, we plan to analyse the deprivation pattern in European countries with particular emphasis on mobility between deprivation and non-deprivation classes and persistent deprivation.