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Essays on vulnerability to poverty and inequality
Full text linkAccording to the recent report of The Commission on the Measurement of Economic Performance and Social Progress (CMEPSP), whose members are also Joseph Stiglitz, Amartya Sen and Jean Paul Fitoussi, statistical indicators are important for designing and assessing policies aiming at advancing the progress of society (Stiglitz, Sen, and Fitoussi, 2009).
The main objective of the present work is to shed light on some aspects concerning the information provided by vulnerability to poverty and inequality indexes.
The first chapter compares empirically the several measures of individual vulnerability to poverty proposed in the literature, in order to understand which is the best signal of poverty that can be used for policies purposes. To this aim the Receiver Operating Characteristic (ROC) curve, the Pearson and Spearman correlation coefficients are used as precision criteria. Using data from the British Household Panel Survey (BHPS), the German Socio-Economic Panel (SOEP) and the Survey on Household Income and Wealth (SHIW), the results show that two groups of indexes can be identified, high- and low-performers, and, among the former, that proposed by Dutta, Foster, and Mishra (2011) is the most precise.
The second chapter applies a non-parametric decomposition of the Foster-Greer-Thorbecke poverty index to the measurement of individual vulnerability to poverty. I highlight that poverty risk can be expressed as a function of three components expected incidence, expected intensity and expected downward variability. This decomposition is useful for risk management purposes since it describes the characteristics of the poverty risk faced by individuals. An empirical illustration is provided using the British Household Panel Survey and the Survey on Household Income and Wealth.
The third chapter focuses on inequality. According to Atkinson (1971), inequality attributable to age should be of little concern for policymakers because it is irrelevant for the distribution of lifetime income or wealth. Concerning that I provide age-adjusted measures of wealth inequality to understand the role of demographic changes in Italy in determining the trends in disparities. Using the Survey on Household Income and Wealth from 1991 to 2008, the results confirm previous findings: age-adjustments are not very important in terms of dynamics.Alla luce del recente rapporto della Commissione sulla Misura della Performance Economica e del progresso Sociale (CMEPSP), composta anche da Joseph Stiglitz, Amartya Sen e Jean Paul Fitoussi, gli indicatori statistici sono importanti per il design e la valutazione delle politiche pubbliche in termini di progresso sociale (Stiglitz, Sen, and Fitoussi, 2009). L'obiettivo principale della tesi in oggetto è l'analisi dell'informazione fornita dagli indici di vulnerabilità alla povertà e disuguaglianza.
Il primo capitolo confronta in termini empirici le misure individuali di vulnerabilità alla povertà proposte in letteratura. Lo scopo è capire quale sia l'indice più preciso nel predire la povertà, affinchè questo possa essere utilizzato come fonte di informazione per le politiche pubbliche. La Receiver Operating Characteristic (ROC) curve, i coefficenti di correlazione di Pearson e Spearman sono utilizzati come criteri per la valutazione della precisione. Usando dati del British Household Panel Survey (BHPS), del German Socio-Economic Panel (SOEP) e della Survey on Household Income and Wealth (SHIW), i risultati mostrano che possono essere identificate due categorie di indici, high- e low-performers; fra i primi, l'indice proposto da Dutta, Foster, and Mishra (2011) è il più preciso nell'identificare i futuri poveri.
Il secondo capitolo applica una scomposizione non parametrica dell'indice di povertà Foster-Greer-Thorbecke alla vulnerabilità alla povertà individuale. Questo approccio mostra come il rischio di povertà può essere espresso come funzione di incidenza attesa, intensità attesa e variabilità negativa attesa. La scomposizione proposta è utile in termini di politiche di risk management per le informazioni circa le caratteristiche del rischio di povertà. Il capitolo prevede due illustrazioni empiriche con dati del British Household Panel Survey e della Survey on Household Income and Wealth.
Il terzo capitolo di focalizza sugli indici di disuguaglianza. Secondo Atkinson (1971), la disuguaglianza attribuibile all'età è irrilevante se l'interesse è concentrato nella distribuzione di reddito e ricchezza di lungo periodo (lifetime perspective). Riguardo ciò, il terzo capitolo propone delle misure di disuguaglianza basate sulla ricchezza netta e corrette per l'effetto dei cambiamenti demografici nella popolazione italiana fra il 1991 ed il 2008. Utilizzando i dati della Survey on Household Income and Wealth della Banca d'Italia, i risultati confermano quanto già osservato in letteratura: gli aggiustamenti demografici non risultano determinanti nella dinamica della disuguaglianza in termini di ricchezza netta
Healthier lifestyles after retirement in Europe? Evidence from SHARE
Full text linkThis paper investigates changes in health behaviours upon retirement, using data drawn from the Survey of Health Aging and Retirement in Europe (SHARE). By exploiting changes in eligibility rules for early and normal retirement, we identify the causal effect of retiring from work on smoking, alcohol drinking, engagement in physical activity and visits to the general practitioner or specialist. We provide evidence about heterogeneous effects related to gender, education, net wealth, early-life conditions and job characteristics. Results show that changes in health behaviours occur upon retirement and may be a key mechanism through which the latter affects health. We find heterogenous effects related especially to gender, education and job characteristics
Identification precision of vulnerability to poverty indexes: does information quantity matter?
Full text linkVulnerability to poverty has been proposed in the literature as an ex ante measure of poverty risk useful for the identification of those who may fall into poverty in the future (Zhang and Guanghua 2008). This paper complements the existing literature on vulnerability measures, by investigating empirically how indexes precision varies according to the quantity of information available, in order to understand which is the best predictor of poverty conditional on data at hand. Using the British Household Panel Survey, we show that information quantity affects differently the predictive power of indexes
Investigating the poverty-obesity paradox in Europe
No full textThis paper investigates the effect of income- and wealth-based poverty on the probability of being obese for the elderly in Europe by analysing data drawn from the Survey of Health, Ageing and Retirement (SHARE) and the English Longitudinal Study of Ageing (ELSA). We use early-life economic conditions and regional circumstances as instruments for poverty later in life to account for endogeneity issues. After controlling for a large set of covariates at the individual, household, regional and country level, the results show that poverty significantly increases the probability of being obese and the Body Mass Index (BMI), for men and women. The results show that, accounting for endogeneity with a bivariate probit model, poor individuals are from 10 to 20% points more likely to be obese than non-poor individuals. The effect on BMI ranges from 0.295 points (2.39 kg) to 0.395 points (2.75 kg). These results are robust to a series of checks and suggest that anti-poverty interventions might have positive side effects in terms of reducing food-related health inequalities
How did European retirees respond to the COVID-19 pandemic?
Full text linkWe investigate the role of retirement on the adoption of preventive behaviours and on mental health during the first wave of the pandemic. We address the endogeneity of the timing of retirement using variation in early retirement and old-age pension eligibility. We find that those who retired earlier responded to the pandemic by limiting their mobility more, and by adopting stricter preventive behaviours in public. These limitations affected the mental health of singles in retirement
Mobility restrictions and alcohol use during lockdown: “A still and dry pandemic for the many”?
Full text linkUnexpected mobility disruptions during lockdown during the first wave of COVID-19 became 'tipping points' with the potential to alter pre-pandemic routines sensitive to socialisation. This paper investigates the impact of lockdown exposure on alcohol consumption. We document two findings using information from the Google Mobility Report and longitudinal data from the Understanding Society survey (UKHLS) in the United Kingdom. First, we find a sharp reduction in both actual mobility and alcohol use (consistent with a "still and dry pandemic for the many" hypothesis). However, we document an increase in alcohol use among heavy drinkers, implying a split behavioural response to COVID-19 mobility restrictions based on alcohol use prior to the pandemic. Second, using the predictions of the prevalence-response elasticity theory, we find that the pandemic's reduction in social contacts is responsible for a 2.8 percentage point reduction in drinking among men
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