Documents Tsakloglou, Panos 9 results

"In this paper, we analyze poverty dynamics in Europe for the period 1994-2001 using the European Community Household Panel (ECHP) and for the period 2005-2008 using the European Union Statistics on Income and Living Conditions (EU-SILC). The study first focuses on poverty profiles which depict the poverty duration, recurrence and persistence and then on the trigger events (income, demographic, labour market) associated with movements into and out of poverty, using a modified version of the Bane and Ellwood (1986) framework of event analysis. Multivariate logit analysis is employed at a second step in order to identify the socioeconomic factors that affect the transitions into and out of poverty. Cross-country differences, as well as differences in poverty dynamic trends between the two periods, are examined. Poverty profiles show a consistency with the welfare regime typology during the period 1994-2001, but the results are not entirely clear in the pre-crisis period. Moreover, the results show that new Member-States cannot be clustered into one group. The results differ significantly across countries when the events associated with poverty exits and entries are examined in detail with the event and multivariate logit analysis, reflecting the different importance of the various household income components, as well as the different effect that the 2 demographic changes have to transitions into and out of poverty in each country. The general patterns that can be observed are five: a) In both periods, income events and especially changes in head's labour earnings seem to be highly associated with poverty transitions in all countries, but more so in the Mediterranean countries, while demographic events seem to be relatively more important in Northern countries; b) Employment events are more important for ending a poverty spell than unemployment events for starting a poverty spell; c) The importance of second income earners (finding a job or increasing earnings) for bringing the household out of poverty was established in both periods; d) The demographic events have a stronger effect in the EU-SILC than the ECHP for poverty entries and weaker for poverty exits; e) The socioeconomic characteristics of the household and the household head present a rather similar patterns across countries in both periods examined."

"The paper provides an analysis of the level, the structure and the patterns of inter-temporal change in hourly earnings inequality in Europe. For the purposes of static inequality decomposition analysis, the data of the ECHP are employed. Considerable cross-country differences are observed across the EU regarding both the level and the structure of earnings inequality. In most countries, of the four factors examined (education, age, sex and sector of employment), education and, to a lesser extent, age are found to be most closely associated with inequality. For the purposes of inequality trend decomposition analysis national data sets for eight European countries are utilised. The results show that in most countries the main factor behind the observed changes in earnings inequality was changes in inequality “within groups” irrespective of the partitioning criterion used, while the effect of changes in group mean earnings was negligible. Finally, changes in the composition of wage and salary earners regarding the four aforementioned factors (education, age, sex and sector of employment) had a relatively large, but not uniform across countries, effect only in a few countries and mainly when the partitioning factor is education."

"The paper examines the mobility into and out of poverty and identifies the determinants of poverty spell beginnings and endings in 14 European Countries for the period 1994-2000, using the European Community Household Panel. The first part of the paper offers a snapshot of poverty mobility in Europe calculating the entry and exit poverty rates, along with the conditional, to the duration of spell, exit probabilities and re-entry rates to poverty. In the second part observed characteristics of the household and the household head are examined in order to identify the determinants of the transitions into and out of poverty, taking into account unobserved heterogeneity across individuals and duration dependence. Multivariate discrete hazard analysis is used and the duration dependence is captured with time dummies. In almost all the 14 EU Member-States examined, the probability of exiting (re-entering) poverty is inversely related to the duration of the poverty (non-poverty) spell. The effect is significant to the inclusion of variables capturing observed heterogeneity (socioeconomic characteristics of the household head and the household and particular employment and demographic events), as well as to the inclusion of a random effects factor capturing the unobserved heterogeneity across individuals. With regards to the socio-economic variables, in most countries, households headed by young or elderly individuals, as well as households with dependent children are in higher risk of staying longer in poverty. In many cases, event variables improve the model significantly and highlight the mechanisms that bring individuals into and out of poverty. "

"International comparisons of inequality based on measures of disposable income may not be valid if the size and incidence of publicly-provided in kind benefits differ across the countries considered. The benefits that are financed by taxation in one country may need to be purchased out of disposable income in another. We estimate the size and incidence of in kind or “non cash” benefits from public housing subsidies, education and health care for five European countries using comparable methods and data. Inequality in the augmented income measure is dramatically lower than in disposable income, with the effects of the three components varying in importance across countries. Adapting equivalence scales to take proper account of differences in needs for health care and education across population members reduces the scale of the effect, but does not eliminate it."

"This paper considers the effects on current pensioner incomes of reforms designed to improve the long-term sustainability of public pension systems in the European Union. We use EUROMOD to simulate a set of common illustrative reforms for four countries selected on the basis of their diverse pension systems and patterns of poverty among the elderly: Denmark, Germany, Italy and the UK. The variations in fiscal and distributive effects on the one hand suggest that different paths for reform are necessary in order to achieve common objectives across countries, and on the other provide indications of the appropriate directions for reform in each case."

"The Greek crisis was the deepest and longest ever recorded in an OECD country in the postwar period. Output declined by over a quarter and disposable income by more than 40%, while the unemployment rate exceeded 27%. The paper explores the effects of the crisis on the level and the structure of aggregate inequality and poverty using the data of EU-SILC for the period 2007–2014. The results show that inequality rose but the magnitude of the change varies across indices. The recorded increases are larger when the indices used are relatively more sensitive to changes close to the bottom of the income distribution. Unlike claims often made in the public discourse, the elderly improved their relative position in the income distribution while there was substantial deterioration in the relative position of the enlarged group of the unemployed. The contribution of disparities between educational groups to aggregate inequality declined while that of disparities between socio-economic groups rose. All poverty indicators suggest that poverty increased substantially, especially when "anchored" poverty lines are used. Substantial changes are observed regarding the structure of poverty. Despite an increase in the population share of households headed by pensioners, their contribution to aggregate poverty declined considerably, with a corresponding increase in the contribution of households headed by unemployed persons. The changes are starker when distribution-sensitive poverty indices are utilized."