The Coupling of Disadvantages: Material Poverty and Multiple Deprivation in Europe before and after the Great Recession
| Author | Rod Hick |
| Date | 01 March 2016 |
| Published date | 01 March 2016 |
| DOI | 10.1177/138826271601800101 |
| Subject Matter | Article |
2 Intersentia
THE COUPLING OF DISADVANTAGES:
MATERIAL POVERTY AND MULTIPLE
DEPRIVATION IN EUROPE BEFORE
AND AFTER THE GREAT RECESSION*
R H**
Abstract
is paper examines the impact of th e Great Recession on material poverty and multiple
deprivation in Europe. Applying as its conceptual framework Poverty as Capability
Deprivation (Hick 2014), which is one s peci cation of Amartya Sen’s capability approach,
and employing the Alkire-Foster adjusted he adcount measure, the paper draws on data
from the EU Survey of Income and Living Conditions to present a multidimen sional
poverty analysis of 24 EU Member States at four time points: 2005, 20 08, 2011 and 2013.
e analysis sho ws that the pre-crisis period was as sociated with substantial reductions
in multidimensional poverty in Europe, w ith the largest reductions occur ring in the
poorest Member States. However, the Southern European countries largely failed to
bene t from these pre-crisis poverty reductions and, when the crisis hit, experienced
the largest increases in multidimensional poverty in Europe. ese patterns re ect a
changing geography of poverty within the European Union, increasingly concentrated
away from the East, and towards the South .
Keywords: capability approach; deprivation; Europe; Great Recession; multi-
dimensiona l; poverty
1. INTRODUCTION
Understanding the impact of t he Great Recession on poverty and living stand ards is a
project of considerable importance. As t he stando in the lead-up to agreement over
* is ar ticle was awarded t he Intersentia /FISS prize for t he best previously u npublished paper
presented at the 2015 FISS Conference held on 7–9June 2015 at the Chinese University of Hong
Kong campus in Shat in, New Territories, Hong Kong.
** Lecturer in Social Policy, School of Social Sciences, Cardi Uni versity. Address: Gla morgan
Building , King Edward V II Avenue, Cardi CF10 3WT, UK; phone: 0044 29 208 74957; e-mail:
hickr@cardi .ac.uk.
e Coupling of Disad vantages
European Jour nal of Social Sec urity, Volume 18 (2016), No. 1 3
the third bailout package for Greece has recently demonstrated, in some countries
at least, the crisis is far from being behind us. In this paper we seek to explore the
impact of the Great Recession in Europe i n hu man terms, taking a broad view of the
experience of poverty and de privation in the period immediately preceding t he crisis
as well as in the per iod since 2008.
To do this, we present a multidimensional analysis of poverty and deprivation.
e study of poverty has, in recent years, been undergoing a multidimensional turn,
with a growing number of analysts embracing a rguments in favour of adopting a
multidimensional approach to its ana lysis. is paper draws on Poverty as Capabilit y
Deprivation (Hick 2014), one speci cat ion of Amartya Sen’s capability approach (see,
e.g., Sen 1992; 1999; 2009), in presenting an ana lysis of multidimensional poverty
in Europe. In this analysis it also employs a recent advance in multidimensional
poverty measurement, the Alkire-Foster (AF) measure. An important advantage
of the AF measure is that it enables multidimensional poverty to be broken down
into its constituent dimensions, t hu s allowing analysis showing how each di mension
contributes to change in multidi mensional poverty.
e paper is structured in n ine sections. In Sec tions 2 and 3, we discuss the
growing trend towards mult idimensionality within povert y analysis, and present the
framework which informs t he present analysis, Po ve rt y a s C ap ab il ity De pr iv at ion . is
is followed, in Section 4, by a discussion of the Alk ire-Foster method. In Section5,
we present a discussion of the data and dimensions which have been selected for the
present analysis. In the si xth section we present our analysis of material pover ty and
multiple deprivation in Europe. is analysis (a) explores the relationships between
each dimension individually, (b) examines aggregate change in multidimensional
poverty in the periods preceding and following t he onset of the Great Recession
and (c) decomposes these by dimension and by Member State. e seventh section
presents sensitivity ana lysis, which is particularly important for multidimensional
poverty analyses given the numerous decisions made by the analyst (Hick 2015). In
the penultimate section, we present some re ec tions on the Alkire-Foster method
itself, and in so doing seek to contr ibute to the literature on multidimensional povert y
measurement. e pap er concludes by summarising the key ndings.
2. THE MULTIDIMENSIONAL TURN IN POVERTY
ANALYSIS
Poverty analysis has, in recent years, been undergoing a multidimensional turn.
is re ects a growing belief that the ana lysis of poverty needs to ex tend beyond a
focus on income alone to examine the experience of deprivation across a ra nge of
dimensions. Recent literature on multidimensional poverty has taken a number of
forms – it has included the delineation of conceptua l frameworks for understanding
poverty multidimensionally, such as Poverty as Capability Deprivation (Hick 2014),
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