Measuring chronic poverty in Italy

Academic researchers, national statistical offices, the Eurostat and the international organisations concerned with fighting poverty globally have proposed various measures of poverty. Some measures address cross-sectional or short-interval poverty; others represent long-lasting poverty. In this study, we suggest indices to measure the diffusion and severity of medium-to-long-lasting deprivation of units in a developed community. The indices we suggest refer to income insufficiency and material deprivation and to the consequences of economic and social distress on the poor with the hidden purpose of identifying groups that are at risk of chronic poverty. Further, the severity of poverty in a community is evaluated according to certain technical properties, particularly the substitutability and discriminatory capability of the indices.