Project description
Accurate estimates of poverty in EU statistics
Income surveys calculate poverty statistics in Europe, but they do not take into account everyone living in poverty. Excluding those not living in private households from the EU Statistics on Income and Living Conditions (EU-SILC) limits our ability to study poverty and its causes. Funded by the European Research Council, the WHOCOUNTS project will improve our understanding of poverty in Europe by addressing errors in official EU statistics. It will analyse data from eight European countries, considering demographics, low-income dynamics and policy interventions; the use of adjusted and unadjusted EU-SILC data sets will provide more accurate estimates of poverty levels and nuanced explanations of extreme poverty. WHOCOUNTS will combine multivariate regression techniques and qualitative comparative analysis, using fuzzy set theory.
Objective
A non-trivial minority of the de facto population are currently ‘missing’ from income surveys used to construct official statistics on poverty across Europe. WHOCOUNTS will correct for noncoverage error in official EU statistics to better understand the changing profile, drivers and depth of poverty across Europe. Whilst those living outside of private households are often part of the inferential population in poverty debates, they are not part of the target population and thus sampling frame of European Union Statistics on Income and Living Conditions (EU-SILC). This undermines our ability to examine the full incidence, composition and causes of poverty because many of this ‘missing minority’ exhibit some of the worst social outcomes across Europe. Much more than merely technical or pragmatic, such practices reflect a set of theoretical and normative judgments about who counts when it comes to researching poverty and social policy. Through novel analysis of hitherto fragmented data, WHOCOUNTS will re-examine poverty across 8 European countries that differ in their noncoverage, demographics, low-income dynamics, and policy interventions. Drawing on adjusted and unadjusted EU-SILC datasets, this project will improve the accuracy of poverty estimates and nuance explanations of (extreme) poverty across divergent welfare regimes, by complementing multivariate regression techniques with (fuzzy set) qualitative comparative analyses. Capitalising on the analytical potential of set-theoretic approaches, the project will transform our understanding of the overall shape and conjunctural causes of poverty across Europe, providing new and necessary information on the social groups often rendered invisible through official statistics. As such, this project promises a step change in our conceptual, methodological and substantive analysis of (extreme) poverty, and will offer future lessons on how poverty statistics can be improved to support better-informed policy interventions.
Keywords
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Project’s keywords as indicated by the project coordinator. Not to be confused with the EuroSciVoc taxonomy (Fields of science)
Programme(s)
Multi-annual funding programmes that define the EU’s priorities for research and innovation.
Multi-annual funding programmes that define the EU’s priorities for research and innovation.
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HORIZON.1.1 - European Research Council (ERC)
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Topic(s)
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Calls for proposals are divided into topics. A topic defines a specific subject or area for which applicants can submit proposals. The description of a topic comprises its specific scope and the expected impact of the funded project.
Funding Scheme
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Funding scheme (or “Type of Action”) inside a programme with common features. It specifies: the scope of what is funded; the reimbursement rate; specific evaluation criteria to qualify for funding; and the use of simplified forms of costs like lump sums.
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Call for proposal
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Procedure for inviting applicants to submit project proposals, with the aim of receiving EU funding.
(opens in new window) ERC-2022-STG
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08193 Cerdanyola Del Valles
Spain
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