Poor Immigrants! Evidence from the Italian Case

Abstract

Due to both their previous fragile condition in the country of origin and to the instable situation in the host country, immigrants tend to be poorer than natives. The consumption expenditure of households of different sizes is made equivalent to that of a family of two people using coefficients which take into account the different needs and economies of scale matching to an increasing number of members. In Italy, since the Eighties the equivalence scale of Carbonaro has been adopted. This conventional equivalence scale has been calculated for the Italian population, based on 1981-1983 consumption data. On applying it to immigrant households in order to estimate the poverty line, 40% of migrants emerge as being included among the “poor” and as many as 21% among the “poorest”. This result suggests that the method of estimate deserves at least to be discussed. In this study we intend to question the use of the equivalence scale of Carbonaro to estimate the poverty level among immigrants. Based on preliminary results, although the poverty incidence among immigrants remains fairly stable regardless of the scale adopted, some interesting differences emerge with reference to the qualitative characteristics of the “poor”. In particular, the poverty level of some sub-populations is under/over-estimated according to the scale adopted. These results allow us to make some interesting remarks concerning the use of a conventional measure of poverty among migrants and add some useful considerations to a possible review of this approach. The equivalence scale is calculated on the basis of the 2004-2012 ISMU Surveys on Migrants in the Lombardy Region. The poverty incidence calculated using ISMU Surveys is compared with that obtained from the 2009 EU-SILC Italian Module on Foreign Population.