Measuring housing poverty in Poland: a multidimensional analysis

Abstract

This study aims to determine the scale of housing poverty and its determinants using a multi-dimensional tool to measure housing quality. Its main contribution is the proposed new approach to the study of housing poverty using the Integrated Fuzzy and Relative (IFR) methodology, which allows a large number of variables of a quantitative and qualitative as well as objective and subjective nature to be included in the analysis. This approach solves the problem of correlation between variables by assigning weights, rather than limiting the number of variables as before. The risk evaluation of bad housing situation is based on micro-data from the Household Budget Survey conducted by the Central Statistical Office in Poland in 2017. Polish households falling into the housing poverty sphere in different sections of society were also examined. The multidimensional approach adopted in this study captures the diversity of housing poverty risk between areas of assessment, which is impossible to achieve using traditional housing deprivation measures.