Monitoring multidimensional poverty in the regions of the European Union : analysis of situation in 2012 and 2007

In this study, we measure the area-specific poverty in the European Union (EU: (i) using the EU nomenclature of territorial units (NUTS 1 mostly); (ii) using different with respect to the degree of urbanisation areas within countries. With the data from the European Union Survey on Income and Living Conditions (EU-SILC), we formulate the Index of Multidimensional Poverty at the regional level, namely the Multidimensional Poverty Index (MPI-reg). The MPI-reg framework comprises three dimensions - health, education, and standard of living - quantified by three sub-indexes: Multidimensional Poverty in Health Index (MPI-H), Poverty in Education Index (MPI-E) and Multidimensional Poverty in Living Standards Index (MPI-L), respectively. In 2012 the MPI-reg was computed for 24 EU countries with Croatia included. Our results show that the level of poverty in the EU ranges from 0.5 % to 13-15 %, with Denmark and Sweden having unequivocally the lowest share of poor people and Latvia, Bulgaria and Romania, having the largest share of poor people. It must be noted, however, that generally, comparing to the situation in 2011, poverty level decreased. The only considerable exception from this reasoning is Portugal where the MPI-reg increased (1.3 pp.). On the other hand, the most significant decrease in the MPI-reg was recorded in Latvia, Bulgaria, and Romania, i.e., in the least affluent countries with respect to the MPI-reg.