Measuring Income Poverty in the EU: Visegrád Countries and European Empirical Data

This book recapitulates the methodology of income poverty measurement applied in the EU and provides statistics and characteristics of the poor in Visegrád countries, supplemented by appendices with results for EU countries. After introducing the data, which is drawn from EU-SILC 2005-2018 and HBS 2010, the main analytical chapter focuses on methodological issues arround measuring income poverty in the European concept, with a focus on the suitability of the currently applied equivalence scales. Sensitivity of the at-risk-of-poverty rate to the OECD-type equivalence scale differs across countries. If the equivalence scale applied does not fit national conditions well, resulting income poverty rates may fail to accurately inform social policies, especially in countries with high sensitivity. Two sets of county-specific equivalence scale are estimated in this work: an expenditure-based scale using HBS data, and a subjective equivalence scale based on subjective poverty lines and EU-SILC data. The book discusses impacts of the estimated scales on income poverty rates and provides alternative subjective income poverty measures, which can usefully complement the objective income poverty data.

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