Enriching the statistics on poverty Reliable statistics are essential for the EU's poverty-reduction strategies. Although extensive data exist at the national level, the picture becomes less clear on careful inspection. An EU-backed project developed indicators to measure poverty at the local level. Digital Economy © Thinkstock Tackling poverty requires reliable, accurate and timely statistics. However, although high-quality data is available at the national level in Europe, it often happens that the finer the required spatial detail, the more blurred the resolution. This is a major challenge for local authorities and other stakeholders. Financed by the Seventh Framework Programme (FP7), the 'Small area methods for poverty and living condition estimates' (SAMPLE) project sought to identify and develop new indicators and models for measuring inequality and poverty locally. To achieve this, the project combined data from national surveys with data extracted from local administrative databases. This included information on benefit claimants and also involved the mining of data held by non-governmental organisations. SAMPLE utilised widely used indicators on monetary and non-monetary poverty. Moreover, in collaboration with stakeholders working with the poor, the project developed new poverty indicators that meet local needs. The results of the SAMPLE project will help local authorities and stakeholders to plan and implement their poverty-reduction policies. In fact, more than two thirds of stakeholders surveyed said that these local indicators would prove very useful in the planning of social policies.
