Lead participant: UT
Participants: UT, CBS, DESTATIS, HCSO, ISTAT, SOTON, UNIPI
Start month: May 2018
End month: September 2020
Objectives:
The reduction of poverty is one of the EU priority. To measure poverty and inequality adequately, the statistics on income and living condition was developed including a variety of indicators such as AROPE. European policies however do not only focus on countries but prominently target European regions; more than one third of the European Union's budget is devoted to its Cohesion policy. Hence, an adequate statistical methodology has to be developed to enable accurate regional measurement by indicators.
The aim is to compare regional measurement between the participating countries with a widely discussed example poverty measurement and a regional Consumer Price Indices (CPIs) as an important upcoming example.
In fact, Consumer Price Indices (CPIs) are complex indicators that can be used to measure aspects of vulnerability (and quality of life in general) and regional differences in price levels are sometimes illustrated in the larger EU Member States but seldom estimated. In the UK, for example, the Relative Regional Consumer Price Levels (RRCPL) provide information only over a six-year period and the demand by users for regional inflation remains fundamentally unsatisfied. A major focus in both examples lies on the detection of practical constraints such as administrative settings and the heterogeneity between countries and regions.
These examples will be used to provide recommendations for transferring the methods to other areas as well as to propose a research agenda for important developments in the future. Within this work package, partners from NSIs and universities from the different countries shall directly cooperate to produce the different poverty indicators using different methods and data. This shall consider a comparison of in-house indicator production against a scientific use files (SUF) based production.
Description of work:
The main specific tasks within WP3 aimed at achieving the objectives are the followings:
Task T3.1: Development of an adequate statistical methodology for measuring poverty and inequality at regional level. After having reviewed the different methods, their needs, and implementation recommendations, the tasks foresees a concrete implementation of the most relevant methods under different data conditions in the different countries.
Task T3.2: Feasibility study on the estimation of regional baskets based on the household expenditure survey using small area estimation techniques. The results from this feasibility study in the UK serves as basis to compare data sources in the different countries for applicability of this approach and for defining appropriate quality measures for price indices. The opportunity to use big data on prices will be explored.
Task T3.3: Synthesis of the results in order to provide recommendations for transferring the methodology to other areas, e.g. estimation of regional price indices.
Deliverables:
D3.1: Report on methods and data base for regional income and household expenditures.
D3.2: Guidelines for best practices implementation for transferring methodology.
