Material Deprivation in Poland and Slovakia – a Comparative Analysis

Abstract

One of the key targets of the EU's 2020 Strategy is to substantially reduce the number of people at risk of poverty or social exclusion. The EU seeks to reduce poverty by lifting at least 20 million people out of the risk of poverty or social exclusion by 2020. The monitoring of progress towards this target is based on the headline indicator AROPE-people at risk of poverty or social exclusion. The indicator applies to people either at risk of poverty or severely materially deprived or living in a household with a very low work intensity. This article focuses on material deprivation, one of the three components monitored to evaluate the social situation in the EU. The article deals with material deprivation and severe material deprivation in Slovak and Polish households. The two main goals of this article are to examine which factors have a significant effect on material deprivation and to determine the influence of those relevant factors on material deprivation of Slovak and Polish households. The article * The publication was written for the project financed from funds allocated to the Faculty of

Multidimensional material deprivation in Poland: a focus on changes in 2015–2017

“…Furthermore, our findings confirm the importance of such attributes of the household head as age, educational attainment, economic activity, and occupational position. Specifically, as other studies have shown (Nelson 2012;Bárcena-Martín et al 2014;Šoltés and Ulman 2015;Israel 2016;Bárcena-Martín et al 2019), our results prove that MD varied substantially for different age groups. Households reported being more materially deprived when they were younger than when they were older.…”

“…The literature provides consistent findings in all countries that higher education reduces MD (Bárcena-Martín et al 2019;Israel 2016;Nelson 2012;Šoltés and Ulman 2015). Unemployed persons, those living alone, and single parents are more vulnerable to MD (Bárcena-Martín et al 2014;Israel and Spannagel 2019;Hicks 2016;Nelson 2012;Šoltés and Ulman 2015). Other socio-demographic factors such as gender, age, health status, and place of residence have also been examined by many authors.…”

“…Applying logit or probit models in their studies, they examine the impact of various socioeconomic factors on the probability of being deprived. Studies using such an approach include Nelson (2012), Rezanková and Želinský (2014), Bárcena-Martín et al (2014), Šoltés and Ulman (2015), Israel (2016), Bruder and Unal (2017), Saltkjel (2018), and Israel and Spannagel (2019). Furthermore, basing on this dichotomy, some of the authors focus on the percentage of the population which cannot afford at least three (or four) of the nine items, and they analyse MD rates (or severe MD rates) at country or regional levels (Nelson 2012;Wyduba and Kalinowski 2017;Dudek 2019;Notten and Guio 2019;Dudek and Sedefoğlu 2019).…”

“…Moreover, Hicks (2016) and Bárcena-Martín et al (2014) revealed that living in a female-headed household significantly increases the risk of MD. Additionally, because disabilities and illnesses require additional expenses, poor health is positively associated with MD (Bedük 2018;Israel 2016;Šoltés and Ulman 2015).…”

“…Nonetheless, most authors find young persons are more deprived compared to the middle-aged group. The elderly experience less deprivation (Bárcena-Martín et al 2014;Israel 2016;Šoltés and Ulman 2015). Likewise, results relating to the level of urbanisation depend on the country of residence (Bruder and Unal 2017).…”