Biggeri L. & Pratesi M. (2017), Monetary poverty indicators at local level: definitions, methods of estimations and comparisons in real term, International Statistical Institute Congress, Morocco, 2017
Abstract
The importance of poverty measures (indicators and number of poor) at sub-national level is widely attested. Particularly, the local poverty indicators are relevant both for a detailed planning of the policy actions against poverty and social exclusion and for the citizens to evaluate their effect. However, there are still open problems to compute adequate sub national poverty indicators. They refer to: 1) the definition of poverty lines; 2) the methods for accounting the spatial variation of cost of living to make comparisons in real terms between different areas; 3) the use of Small Area Estimation methods when sample size is not enough to obtain accurate estimates of the indicators at local level. In this paper, we discuss all these problems in a coherent way, presenting analyses on the impact of the different choices on the value of poverty rates for the 20 Italian Regions and computing the estimations of the poverty rates at the sub-regional level by using SAE methods. The key results underlined the strong differences in the territorial distribution of poor by using national specific versus sub-national specific poverty lines, while the effect of the heterogeneity of the spatial price indexes seems less important.