Showing papers by "Conchita D'Ambrosio published in 2003"

Income Distribution and Social Exclusion of Children: Evidence from Italy and Spain in the 1990s*

Abstract: INTRODUCTIONThe last decade has witnessed a striking divergence in the economic well-being of children and the elderly, the two most vulnerable age groups in any society. In many industrialized countries, an improvement in the economic situation of the elderly has been accompanied by a deterioration of the economic situation of children. ' According to Eurostat (2000a), 21% of all children in the European Union live in a low-income household, in contrast to 16% for adults.2In this paper, we investigate the differences between the well-being of different social groups, with a focus on the relative position of individuals living in households with children. We concentrate on Italy and Spain in the mid-1990s since these countries are highly comparable in many crucial aspects, including their living conditions and welfare state institutions. While most studies have restricted the analysis of the well-being of children to monetary indicators (typically poverty rate), we add to the literature by analyzing both monetary and non-monetary indicators. The original contribution of this paper is thus both a methodological one, by demonstrating the lack of correlation between monetary and nonmonetary indicators of well-being, and a substantive one, in documenting the degree of social and economic deprivation of children in Italy and Spain. In particular, and following the approach suggested by Tsakloglou and Papadopoulos (2001), we conclude that individuals living in households with children in the 1990s were at greater risk of social exclusion than individuals living in households without children in both Italy and Spain. Such individuals performed worse than average on every indicator analyzed in this paper, and furthermore, their deprivation tends to persist over time, more so than the rest of the population. The paper also reveals that Italy and Spain are characterized by substantial disparities in all the non-monetary indicators analyzed, but that Spain appears on average more deprived. This is particularly interesting considering that Spain appears as being very similar to Italy when traditional monetary indicators are used (such as the headcount ratio). Results from this paper thus suggest that traditional indicators of poverty are not perfect indicators to identify people who are socially and economically deprived in any given society.The paper is structured as follows. The next section presents the concept and the measure of social exclusion, the third section describes the dataset and the variables used in the analysis, the fourth section presents the results of the estimation of income poverty, and the fifth section presents the results from the analysis of social exclusion. The last section summarizes the main results.THE CONCEPT OF SOCIAL EXCLUSIONSocial exclusion, a term that originated in France in 1974 (Lenoir, 1974), has recently become one of the main concepts in social policy debates in EU countries. With the Treaty of Amsterdam, which came into force in 1999, the EU has, indeed, enlarged its objectives to include the reduction of social exclusion among its members. Social exclusion is not a term, however, which is easily defined. While there is a general agreement in the literature concerning the definitions of poverty, i.e. a lack of resources (most frequently, income or expenditure), the definition of social exclusion is still very much debated.3 A consensus is gradually emerging, which acknowledges the links between social exclusion and poverty, but which also acknowledges the differences between the two concepts (Atkinson, 1998). In particular, social exclusion tends to be a multidimensional concept that is concerned not only with income, but also with a wide range of indicators of living standards (Room, 1995).4There are three different definitions of social exclusion: 1) the "French"; 2) the "AngloSaxon"; and 3) the "monopoly" approach. According to the French tradition, which stems from Lenoir, social exclusion is seen as a dynamic process of social disqualification (Paugam, 1991) or social disaffiliation (Castel, 1995) leading to the breakdown of the relationships between individuals and the society in which they live. …

ICT and Socio-Economic Exclusion

Abstract: Using an innovative dataset for ICT use for five countries in Europe, we examine the impact and association of ICT on socio-economic exclusion. Using OLS regression we find significant wage premiums for PC and internet usage at the workplace. Following Dinardo/Fortin/Lemieux (1997), we examine the impact of ICT on the distribution of wages. We find that the risk of economic exclusion increases markedly for those not having ICT at the workplace, with the largest effects being found in Britain. To examine the impact of ICT on social exclusion, we create a multi-dimensional index of social exclusion, and also following DFL97, examine the change in the distribution of the exclusion index. Not being able to afford or knowing how to operate a home PC in Britain and Israel is associated with a large increase in the risk of social exclusion.

Target Shortfall Orderings and Indices

Abstract: Given any income distribution, to each income we associate a subgroup containing all persons whose incomes are not higher than this income and a person's target shortfall in a subgroup is the gap between the subgroup highest income and his own income. We then develop an absolute target shortfall ordering, which, under constancy of population size and total income, implies the Lorenz and Cowell-Ebert complaint orderings. Under the same restrictions, one distribution dominates the other by this ordering if and only if the dominated distribution can be obtained from the dominant one by a sequence of rank preserving progressive transfers, where each transfer is shared equally by all persons poorer than the donor of the transfer. The relationship of the ordering with the absolute deprivation and differential orderings, and its consistency with ranking of distributions by absolute target shortfall indices are explored. Well-known inequality indices like the absolute Gini index and the standard deviation are interpreted as absolute target shortfall indices. Finally, the possibility of a relative target shortfall ordering is also discussed.

The Measurement of Social Exclusion

Abstract: This paper develops an axiomatic approach to the measurement of social exclusion. At the individual level, social exclusion is viewed in terms of deprivation of the person concerned with respect to different functionings in the society. At the aggregate level we treat social exclusion as a function of individual exclusions. The class of subgroup decomposable social exclusion measures using a set of independent axioms is identified. We then look at the problem of ranking exclusion profiles by exclusion dominance principle under certain restrictions. Finally, applications of decomposable and non-decomposable measures suggested in the paper using European Union and Italian data are also considered.

ICT and Socio-Economic Exclusion

Abstract: Using an innovative dataset for ICT use for five countries in Europe,we examine the impact and association of ICT on socio-economic exclusion.Using OLS regression we find significant wage premiums for PC and internet usage at the workplace.Following Dinardo/Fortin/Lemieux (1997),we examine the impact of ICT on the distribution of wages.We find that the risk of economic exclusion increases markedly for those not having ICT at the workplace,with the largest effects being found in Britain.To examine the impact of ICT on social exclusion,we create a multi-dimensional index of social exclusion,and also following DFL97,examine the change in the distribution of the exclusion index.Not being able to afford or knowing how to operate a home PC in Britain and Israel is associated with a large increase in the risk of social exclusion.