ENRICA CHIAPPERO MARTINETTI

La povertà nell'Europa degli anni 1980: 

alcune considerazioni di carattere metodologico ed interpretativo

N. 160

Summary — In the most recent years a great deal of attention has been devoted to the poverty phenomenon and not only in scientific field, where important contributions have been produced by economists, statisticians and social scientists, but also at the institutional level. A particular attention is also manifested to the European Community which has promoted some extensive and specific program; the purpose was to analyse the dimension and the main features to the poverty in Europe and to implement specific measures anti-poverty at both national and Community level.

In this article we have used the recent results presented in the final report to the second European Poverty Programme, to analyse some methodological issues in the empirical studies that can affect the results obtained. Firstly, we have sought to outline how small differences in some important methodological details (i.e. poverty concept used, poverty line and equivalence scale adopted) can generate different conclusions about the poverty extension.

In the second part of this work, we have discussed some issues about the international comparability of data on poverty when a Community-wide basis rather than a country specific perspective is adopted.