The Fairness Community of Practice at the European Commission Joint Research Centre, Monitoring, Indicators and Impact Evaluation Unit invites you to an online event on:
In-work poverty in Europe: is the EU indicator still fit for purpose?
The event is part of a webinar series on fairness and related issues
organised by the Fairness Community of Practice. For details on the upcoming events please see the Fairness CoP page.
- applied sciences | economic conditions | working conditions | poverty
- Tuesday 23 November 2021, 11:00 (CET)
- Online only
Practical information
- When
- Tuesday 23 November 2021, 11:00 (CET)
- Where
- Online only
- Languages
- English
Report
Since the European Union added a new indicator of “in-work poverty risk” to the European list of social indicators in 2003, the share of employed persons aged over 18 at risk of poverty increased from 8.2% in 2005 to 9% just before the Covid-19 pandemic in 2019 after reaching a peak of 9.8% in the aftermath of the Global Financial Crisis.
While the idea behind it is rather intuitive, measuring in-work poverty is far from straightforward. In particular, the EU definition of in-work poverty is a hybrid concept, mixing the individual’s employment condition (based on relatively strict criteria) and the household’s (equivalised) income, which identifies the poverty status of the worker. Moreover, as any relative measure, in-work poverty defined in relative terms may vary over time simply because of a variation in the median and not because of an improvement in the standards of living. These (apparently) technical issues can have major implications for policy, in particular as the indicator ends up excluding the most vulnerable workers and it assumes full pooling of resources within the household.
At the JRC Community of Practice on Fairness event, Estefania Alaminos Aguilera (Eurostat), Sophie Ponthieux (INSEE), Michele Raitano (Università della Sapienza) and Klaus Müller (European Parliamentary Research Service) discussed the strengths and weaknesses of the existing indicator and reflected on the possible ways forward. Andrea Garnero (JRC) introduced and moderated the event while Olivier Bontout (DG EMPL) concluded.
Presentations
Sophie Ponthieux (INSEE)
Klaus Müller (European Parliamentary Research Service)
Michele Raitano (Università della Sapienza),
Estefania Alaminos Aguilera (Eurostat)