Multi-Tiered Poverty in a Tiered Europe

In many European countries, the consequences of the budget cuts and the unprecedented economic and social crisis on poverty have been considerable. As the available data indicate, it is not only the level of poverty that matters, but also the way in which it should be examined and interpreted. New concepts such as “new poor”, “severe poor”, “near poor”, “persistent poor” “subjective poor”, “materially deprived” indicate that we deal with new forms of poverty, completely differentiated from the “old poor”. The “old poor” have become poorer and stay in poverty for extended periods of time. Nevertheless, a new category of poor appears that is the persons who fall for first time below the conventional poverty line and have never dropped in on before.

These developments show the multidimensional nature of poverty lead to a multiple measurement approach. In this paper, we use four dimensions each one presenting separately a unidimensional measure: monetary relative poverty, monetary absolute poverty, subjective poverty and severe material deprivation-severe poverty. Each of these different ways of perceiving and measuring poverty offers a different perspective on the same phenomenon.

Using EU-SILC data, we perform a correlation analysis to investigate the relationship between different poverty concepts and their measures. We also analyze the poverty identification patterns of the population by country and country group. According to our results, multiple dimensions of poverty are identified in all Member of the EU, although the extent of each one displays fairly large cross-country differences. The percentage of those living in extreme poverty situations is highest in the New Member States and the Southern countries including Greece one of worst -hit countries by the economic depression.