Alternative Standpoints on Poverty in Spain: A Question of Definition and Measure

Abstract

In 2010 the European Union (EU) presented the Europe 2020 Strategy, a set of measures aiming to deal with the adverse effects of the recent financial crisis and to strengthen the economies of the Eurozone. One of the stated priority objectives was the need to reduce by twenty million the number of people at risk of poverty and exclusion in the EU as a whole. In the case of Spain, this goal meant reducing the number of people living in poverty by 1.4 million between 2010 and 2020. To what extent are the poverty reduction goals set for Spain by 2020 now being met? This is the question we wish to answer in this issue of Perspectives Demogràfiques. Since we have recently passed the halfway point of the stipulated period, this would seem to be a good time to make a provisional appraisal of the progress made so far in order to analyse the prospects for success in the coming years. To this effect, we shall begin with a brief overview of the virtues and defects of the official measures presently being used to quantify poverty and then we shall propose an alternative. Although the new measure is as arbitrary as those already existing, it has the virtue of offering a complementary and, perhaps, more realistic perspective on the worrying processes of social exclusion which have recently been developing in Spain. The ways in which we define and measure social phenomena are supremely important, not only when attempting to portray and understand the world around us but, in particular, when seeking to modify or remedy it. In this regard, poverty is a paradigmatic example with a considerable impact on society and presence in the media after the onset of the cycle of economic recession in 2008. How has it evolved in recent years? Which sectors are most seriously affected? What might we expect in the future? If we take a different perspective from that of some unduly reassuring official measures which do not seem to take into account the major structural changes which are occurring in the Spanish economy, there are reasons for pessimism: children, foreigners and people without university education are among the sectors most affected by the ebb and flow of the present economic situation.