Are Italians Getting Multidimensionally Poorer? Evidence on the Lack of Equitable and Sustainable Well-Being

Abstract

According to official statistics, the incidence of absolute poverty in Italy has sharply risen from 3.6 in 2005 to 7.7 percent in 2020, and this number is likely to rise in the post-pandemic period. However, standard poverty measures only consider the monetary aspect of poverty, neglecting the multidimensional nature of the phenomenon. The last decades have offered solid empirical evidence to guide political efforts to tackle both multidimensional wellbeing and poverty. In these times of rising inequalities, these efforts seem particularly valuable for identifying the most vulnerable groups. While Italy has made significant progress in defining multidimensional wellbeing, less attention has been given to multidimensional poverty. Hence, the goal of this paper is to offer a means for measuring multidimensional poverty (MPI) in Italy based on the Alkire-Foster method by using a widely recognized national framework for wellbeing (BES equitable and sustainable wellbeing) as the normative basis for the construction of the index. The contribution of the paper is twofold: (1) on the theoretical side, it seeks to increase the usability of national and international frameworks for wellbeing by proposing a national assessment scheme as a normative base for defining the dimensions of poverty; (2) on the empirical side, it provides evidence on the frequency and composition of multidimensional poverty in Italian regions. The results show that multidimensional poverty in Italy has increased over time, with the percentage of individuals considered as multidimensionally poor rising from 9.5 percent in 2005 to 17.5 percent in 2015. Moreover, a dimensional breakdown across regions and logistic regression shows that being older, female, from the South and married or widowed increases the probability of facing multidimensional poverty.