Households' (in)security in the European Union : from principal components to causality analysis

Economic security is considered one of the primary aspects of well-being and it is usually closely associated with poverty. This article intends to explore the main determinants of economic (in)security in European Union countries and to investigate the relationship between the level of economic insecurity and the degree of economic freedom. In order to achieve our goal, we used Principal Component Analysis (PCA) to stipulate a composite and standardized index of economic insecurity in the European Union and, afterwards, we utilized panel data regressions to analyze its correlation with the variables of the Index of Economic Freedom.