Smoothed Income Poverty in European Countries

The purpose of this paper is to obtain by combining two longitudinal perspectives a more detailed national picture of poverty in the Member States of the European Union, using the _rst four waves (1994 - 1997) of the European Community Household Panel (ECHP). In addition to this detailed consideration of the time dimension, poverty incidence, poverty gap and poverty intensity are measured. Overall, the ranking across countries and dimensions is relatively robust. Denmark and Portugal di_er from the rest of the countries in each dimension. Other exceptions include France and Ireland, where poverty intensity is considerably lower than in the other welfare regimes. The results in terms of the di_erent subgroups of poor individuals, namely transitory, intermittently and persistently poor, emphasize the importance of a more di_erentiated perspective on poverty, in particular concerning the relationship between social and demographic characteristics and individuals' long-term income situation.smoothed income; poverty; panel data; ECHP.

Regional Income Stratification in Unified Germany Using a Gini Decomposition Approach

This paper delivers new insights into the development of income inequality and regional stratification in Germany after unification using a new method for detecting social stratification by a decomposition of the GINI index which yields the obligatory between- and withingroup components as well as an "overlapping" index for the different sup-populations. We apply this method together with a jackknife estimation of standard errors. We find that East Germany is still a stratum on its own when using post-government income, but since 2001 no longer is when using pre-government income. These results remain stable when using alternatively defined regional classifications. However, there are also indications of some regional variation within West Germany. Overall, these findings are important for the political discussion with respect to a potential regional concentration of future transfers from East to West Germany.Inequality decomposition; Gini; Stratification; German unification; Regional disparities; SOEP

Decomposing permanent and transitory poverty

This paper proposes a new method of calculating the proportion of permanently impoverished persons among persons in poverty as a whole. The paper shows that the widely used Shorrocks-Index for decomposing permanent and transitory inequality can also be acquired to describe poverty. This method overcomes certain difficulties involved in the methods of Rodgers & Rodgers (1993). The characteristics of the proposed Poverty-Stability-Index allow for an intuitive differentiation between the relative sizes of permanent and transitional poverty. Empirical results using data from the German Socio-Economic Panel (GSOEP) will be presented for East- and West-Germany.In der vorliegenden Arbeit wird eine neue Berechnungsweise des Anteils permanenter Armut an der gesamten vorhandenen Armut vorgestellt. Es wird gezeigt, dass der weithin genutzte Shorrocks-Index zur Zerlegung von permanenter und transitorischer Ungleichheit auch zur Beschreibung von Armut genutzt werden kann. Damit können Unzulänglichkeiten in der von Rodgers & Rodgers (1993) gewählten Berechnung behoben werden. Die Nutzung des hier vorgeschlagenen Armuts-Stabilitäts-Koeffizienten erlaubt eine gut interpretierbare Unterscheidung der relativen Größe von permanenter und transitorischer Armut. Empirische Ergebnisse werden anhand des Sozio-oekonomischen Panels (SOEP) für Ost- und Westdeutschland dargestellt

Growth in Unemployment Raises Poverty Rates: Most Low-Wage Earnings Constitute Supplement to Primary Household Income

Inequality with respect to personal earned income has increased in recent years. This trend has gone hand in hand with changes in both the employment constellations of households and the labor market activity of individuals (e.g. through 'minijobs'). In particular, the years since 2000 have seen a rise in the share of households with no market income because their members are either registered or hidden unemployed. These findings do not necessarily indicate an increase in relative poverty, because the latter depends on net household income and not just on individual primary incomes. While the risk of poverty also increased in recent years amongst low-wage earners, the rise only applied to those 47% of low-wage earners who live in households without another gainfully employed household member. More than half of all low-wage earners live in households that have a below-average risk of poverty. Unemployment still represents the principal risk factor for poverty. Whereas the likelihood of being poor in the event of unemployment was 29% in 1993, this risk had increased by ten percentage points by 2003. For an unemployed person living alone or whose spouse or partner was not working, the risk of poverty in 2003 was a substantial risk of 53%.

Gestiegene Einkommensungleichheit in Deutschland

Seit dem Jahr 2000 ist in Deutschland ein markanter Anstieg der Ungleichheit der Einkommen der privaten Haushalte zu beobachten. Damit verbunden haben sich auch die Armutsrisiken deutlich erhöht. Welche Ursachen haben zu dem Anstieg der Einkommensungleichheit geführt? Welche Entwicklungen sind bei den individuellen Erwerbseinkommen der Personen im erwerbsfähigen Alter zu verzeichnen und welche Auswirkungen haben diese auf die Verteilung der Haushaltseinkommen in der Bevölkerung insgesamt

Incidence and Intensity of Smoothed Income Poverty in European Countries

The purpose of this paper is to obtain, by combining two longitudinal perspectives, a more detailed national picture of poverty in the member states of the European Union, using the first four waves (1994–7) of the European Community Household Panel (ECHP). In addition to this detailed consideration is given to the time dimension, poverty incidence, poverty gap and poverty intensity. Overall, the ranking across countries and dimensions is relatively robust. Denmark and Portugal differ from the rest of the countries in each dimension. Other exceptions include France and Ireland, where poverty intensity is considerably lower than in the other welfare regimes. The results in terms of the different subgroups of poor individuals, namely transitory, intermittently and persistently poor, emphasize the importance of a more differentiated perspective on poverty, in particular concerning the relationship between social and demographic characteristics and individuals’ long-term income situation.Dieser Beitrag ist mit Zustimmung des Rechteinhabers aufgrund einer (DFG-geförderten) Allianz- bzw. Nationallizenz frei zugänglich. - This publication is with permission of the rights owner freely accessible due to an Alliance licence and a national licence (funded by the DFG, German Research Foundation) respectively