B7492 - POVERTÀ E DISUGUAGLIANZA: DATI, MISURE ED ANALISI

Learning outcomes

The course aims to equip students with the necessary skills to analyze poverty, inequality, and deprivation phenomena, to understand the nature of indicators used at the national and international levels, and to interpret statistical information produced from official surveys. The course will also touch on the temporal evolution of inequality, poverty mapping, and poverty reduction policies.

Course contents

1. Income and wealth distribution
2. Absolute and relative poverty
3. Incidence and intensity of poverty
4. Multidimensional poverty
5. Poverty persistence
6. Economic insecurity
7. Deprivation
8. Inequality
9. Data sources: sample surveys and administrative sources
10. Estimators of poverty and inequality parameters in surveys with complex design

Readings/Bibliography

Wolff E. N. (2009), Poverty and income distribution, Wiley-Blackwell.

Alfons A., Templ M. (2013), Estimation of Social Exclusion Indicators from Complex Surveys: The R Package laeken, Journal of Statistical Software, 54, 15, 1-25

Teaching methods

Part of the lessons will be held in the computer lab, with the aim of working on real data produced by the main sample surveys on the subject. This activity will allow students to independently analyze individual income data using dedicated R software packages.

In order to highlight the magnitude of the phenomena discussed, significant reports published in Italy, Europe, and worldwide on these topics will be examined.

Assessment methods

The exam consists of:
a) a lab exercise, with evaluation, on the use of R software for analyzing income distribution,
b) an oral exam.

Teaching tools

Teaching material downloadable from the web page: https://virtuale.unibo.it/

Software R, downloadable from http://www.r-project.org/ .

Office hours

See the website of Maria Ferrante