Dinamiche della povertà, persistenze e corsi di vita

Abstract

The aim of this article is to offer a contribution to a theoretically-oriented poverty investigation, starting from the idea that it is necessary to give a greater impulse to the definition of a theoretical reference-frame. Therefore, we first propose a brief discussion of the main approaches, based respectively on poverty persistence hypothesis, life course hypothesis, individualization thesis, and social stratification theory. After defining poverty as the lack of balance between resources and needs (both translated into monetary terms), we have then explored the impact of education and geographical area on conditions of poverty, in the light of the contributions of the above four approaches. The methodological strategy is founded on the Event History Analysis, while the data set comes from the European Community Household Panel (ECHP) and covers the 1994-2001 period. The results show, among other things, that: 1) high/medium education exerts a strong impact (on poverty reduction) only in the first year, while in the successive years the negative effects of low education prevail; 2) in the same way as for education, living in the North/Center of Italy strongly contributes to getting out of poverty soon (in the first year), while in the Mezzogiorno the reaction is weak even in the first year and diminishes more and more. On the whole, the analysis indicates that in the next future investigations based on specific social groups will be more fruitful.