Abstract
The issue of multidimensionality is well established in poverty research, and it is generally recognised that income alone is inadequate as a measure of social inclusion or quality of life (QoL). However, social policy still tends to address the different dimensions of QoL—such as poverty, health, housing and social cohesion—in isolation. This raises the question of the variation across dimensions or groups in the extent of multidimensionality. For instance, are housing or health problems experienced by people with a range of other QoL problems, or do they tend to occur in isolation? Does this differ between social risk groups, such as lone parents, older adults or children? The answers have implications for the service needs of people with health problems or with inadequate housing. We address these issues in this paper, analysing the 2013 quality of life module on the EU-SILC data for Ireland and adapting the adjusted headcount ratio methodology of Alkire and Foster to address the issue of multidimensionality.
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Notes
The percentage of the income poor who have three or more of the eleven QoL problems is shown in the third column of Table 4.
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Acknowledgements
This paper is a development of an earlier project funded by the Social Inclusion Division of the Department of Social Protection in Ireland. The Central Statistics Office made available the Irish SILC dataset for the analysis. The authors are grateful for this assistance and support. Any remaining errors and omissions are the sole responsibility of the authors.
Funding
An earlier version of this paper was funded by the Social Inclusion Division of the Department of Social Protection in Ireland.
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Watson, D., Maître, B., Whelan, C.T. et al. Poverty, economic stress and quality of life: lessons from the Irish case. Int Rev Econ 64, 125–143 (2017). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12232-016-0265-0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s12232-016-0265-0