Il monitoraggio della povertà e della sua dinamica: questioni di misura e evidenze empiriche

Abstract

The paper presents a broad overview of issues on the measurement of poverty in developed countries, and chiefly in Italy, as well empirical evidence on the trends and the dynamics of poverty in Italy in the period 1980-97. In section 2 recent advances in monitoring poverty in Italy, largely inspired by the International Standard of Poverty Line, are outlined. Some selected measurement issues are then discussed, i.e.: (I) income or consumption as the reference variable; (II) equivalence scales; (III) using the scale for setting the poverty line; (IV) choice of the location measure to anchor the line. In section 3, the attention is shifted to the analysis of poverty dynamics. After a cursory review of the main methodological approaches, the focus is on empirical analy-ses on the dynamics of poverty in Italy, 1989-1993, carried out on panel data from the Bank of Italy Survey on Savings and Income.