Social Exclusion

1
Social Exclusion

• Stephan Klasen
• HDCA Summer School
• Groningen August 29, 2006
• (thanks to Conchita DAmbrosio for giving me
  presentation of her paper)

2
Origin and Concept of Social Exclusion

• Concept developed by French sociologists in 1970s
• Duffy 1995inability to participate effectively
  in economic, social, and cultural life and, in
  some characteristics, alienation and distance
  from mainstream society (Duffy, 1995).
• Room (1995) denial or non-realisation of civil,
  political, and social rights of citizenship.
• Many different conceptualisations.
• Amsterdam Treaty, Lisbon Agenda of EU combat
  social exclusion and promote social cohesion.

3
Difference to Income Poverty

• Dynamic (?), relative, outcome-based
• Focusing on participation and interaction with
  society
• Legal issues important (e.g. citizenship rights,
  anti-discrimination)
• Employment opportunities important
• Spatial issues important (access to
  goods/services)

4
Relation to Capability Approach

• Focus on ends, allows for heterogeneity in
  ability to translate incomes into inclusion
  (analogy to disability)
• Close relationship to rights-based approaches
  to development (inclusion a freedom/right)
• Social Exclusion as particular capability-failure
  Klasen (2001) Failure to have ability to be
  integrated into the community, participate in
  community and public life, and enjoy social bases
  of self-respect.
• Social exclusion as multidimensional capability
  failure (Bossert, DAmbrosio and Peragine, 2006)

5

• Operationalising Social Exclusion Three Examples
• Atkinson (2002) for EU Lisbon Agenda Indicators
  for Monitoring Social Cohesion.
• Klasen (2001) Focusing on particular capability
  failure.
• Bossert et al (2006) Social Exclusion as chronic
  deprivation.

6
Atkinson, Cantillon, Nolan et al.

• Primary versus secondary indicators
• Primary indicators relative disposable income
  poverty, income distribution, low income
  persistence, poverty gap, CV of regional
  employment rates, long-term unemployment rate,
  persons in workless households, share
  school-leavers without secondary degree, life
  expectancy, self-defined health status by income
  quintile

7
Klasen (2001)

• Social exclusion as particular capability
  failure.
• Possible components to generate social exclusion
  measure
• Legal exclusion (citizenship rights,
  active/passive voting rights, etc.)
• Economic Exclusion (unemployment, relative
  poverty)
• Geographic exclusion (access to goods, services,
  leisure, health, education facilities)

8

• Bossert, DAmbrosio and Peragine, 2006
  Deprivation and Social Exclusion (Economica)
• When does an individual suffer from deprivation
  or from social exclusion?
• What is the level of deprivation or social
  exclusion in a given society?
• Can we say that in Spain there is more social
  exclusion than in Italy?

9

• Social exclusion manifests itself in the lack of
  an individual's access to functionings as
  compared to other members of society.
• The concept is closely related to deprivation.
• Runciman (1966) formulated the idea that a
  person's feeling of deprivation in a society
  arises out of comparing its situation with those
  who are better off.

10

• Building on this conceptualization, we view
  deprivation as a multi-dimensional distributional
  phenomenon characterized by two basic
  determinants
• the lack of identification with other members of
  society (intensity of difference)
• the aggregate alienation experienced by an agent
  with respect to those with fewer functioning
  failures (share of people from whom one is
  alienated).

11

• While the concept of deprivation is a static
  concept, social exclusion in this formulation has
  important dynamic aspects
• an individual can become socially excluded if
  its condition of deprivation is persistent or
  worsens over time.
• Its measurement requires the inclusion of time as
  an important variable.
• Bossert et al. define individual exclusion as
  individual deprivation over time, and social
  exclusion is obtained as an aggregate of the
  individual exclusion measures.

12

• A deprivation score, qi, is constructed for each
  population member, i, indicating the degree to
  which functionings that are considered relevant
  are not available to the agent.

13

• How we proceed
• A deprivation score, qi, is constructed for each
  population member, i, indicating the degree to
  which functionings that are considered relevant
  are not available to the agent.

qi is the functioning failure of individual i.
qis constitute the primary inputs of our
analysis.
14

• Bossert et al. assume that the aggregation step
  for constructing qi has already been performed in
  order to arrive at this single measure of
  functioning failure. A plausible possibility is
  the number of functionings failures, which is the
  measure used in the empirical application.

15

• 2. Bossert et al. derive the degree of
  deprivation suffered by an individual, i, in any
  given period, Di(q), where q is a
  functioning-failure profile.

Aggregate over time, we get individual exclusion
as average deprivation over the periods
considered.
Aggregate over individuals, we get aggregate
deprivation in any period as the arithmetic mean
of the individual deprivation levels.
Aggregate over individuals, we get social
exclusion as the arithmetic mean of the
individual exclusion levels.
16

• 2. We derive the degree of deprivation suffered
  by an individual, i, in any given period, Di(q),
  where q is a functioning-failure profile.

We characterize Di(q), imposing some desirable
properties.
Aggregate over time, we get individual exclusion
as average deprivation over the periods
considered.
Aggregate over individuals, we get aggregate
deprivation in any period as the arithmetic mean
of the individual deprivation levels.
Aggregate over individuals, we get social
exclusion as the arithmetic mean of the
individual exclusion levels.
17

• Axioms
• normalization
• focus
• anonymity
• homogeneity
• translation invariance
• deprivation additivity
• population proportionality
• deprivation proportionality.

18
Theorem

19
Theorem

Set of individuals whose functioning failure is
lower than that of i.
20

the lack of identification with other members of
society (depth of difference)
the aggregate alienation experienced by an agent
with respect to those with fewer functioning
failures.
21

• Aggregate Deprivation
• The aggregate measure of deprivation is given by
  the average of the individual levels of
  deprivation, as is the case for the relationship
  between individual and aggregate deprivation
  according to earlier suggestions such as the
  Yitzhaki index.
• This measure is characterized imposing some
  desirable properties.

22

• Individual Exclusion
• The exclusion an individual proves depends on the
  number of consecutive years spent in deprivation.
• Because Bossert et al. want to take into
  consideration the persistence in states of
  deprivation over time, they do not simply add up
  the levels of deprivation in each period but,
  instead, put a higher weight on situations where
  the state of deprivation persists over several
  periods.
• The weight is given, for each set of consecutive
  periods in which i is deprived, by the number of
  these periods.

23

• Individual Exclusion
• The individual exclusion, characterized imposing
  some desirable properties, is the following

24

• Social Exclusion
• As is the case for the move from individual to
  aggregate deprivation, Bossert et al. follow the
  standard approach of obtaining aggregate social
  exclusion by taking the arithmetic mean of the
  individual exclusion measures.
• Rather than imposing this structure, however,
  they derive it from what we think of as a
  plausible set of axioms.

25

• An application to EU countries
• Data from the European Community Household Panel
  (ECHP).
• They base their analysis on all the waves that
  cover the period from 1994 to 2000.
• Of the 15 EU member states, we could not consider
  Austria, Finland, Luxembourg and Sweden since the
  data for these countries were not available for
  all the waves. For similar reasons we had to
  exclude Germany and the UK ( were substituted by
  national surveys, SOEP and BHPS respectively,
  that did not collect information on all the
  variables considered in our application.
• Information has been collected at the individual
  or the household level depending on the variable,
  but the unit of our analysis is the individual.
• The calculation uses required sample weights.
• Use the balanced panel since they are interested
  in analyzing the persistence of deprivation.

26

• For the choice of the non-monetary indicators to
  be considered for measuring social exclusion and
  deprivation with the ECHP, we follow the
  suggestions of Eurostat (2000) and analyze the
  well-being focusing on the 14 non-monetary
  variables proposed there.
• Financial difficulties 1. Persons living in
  households that have great difficulties in making
  ends meet 2. Persons living in households that
  are in arrears with (re)payment of housing and/or
  utility bills
• Basic necessities 3. Persons living in
  households which cannot afford meat, fish or
  chicken every second day 4. Persons living in
  households which cannot afford to buy new
  clothes 5. Persons living in households which
  cannot afford a week's holiday away from home
• Housing conditions 6. Persons living in the
  accommodation without a bath or shower 7.
  Persons living in the dwelling with damp walls,
  floors, foundations, etc. 8. Persons living in
  households which have a shortage of space
• Durables 9. Persons not having access to a car
  due to a lack of financial resources in the
  household 10. Persons not having access to a
  telephone due to a lack of financial resources in
  the household 11. Persons not having access to a
  color TV due to a lack of financial resources in
  the household.

27

• The individual functioning failure employed in
  the application is the number, unweighed, of the
  above listed 11 variables that the interviewed
  claimed to have, or not to have, depending on the
  variable.
• Example consider the variables in the first
  category.
• An individual living in a household that has
  great difficulties in making ends meet is
  assigned a score of 1 if, in addition, he lives
  in a household that is in arrears with
  (re)payment of housing or utility bills, then he
  obtains a score of 2 if, furthermore, he is
  unable to afford meat, fish or chicken every
  second day, then he receives the score 3.

28

• In order to examine the robustness of our index
  and the differences between the measure of
  deprivation proposed here and other comparable
  measures in the literature, we use the same data
  to compute the Yitzhaki (1979) index of
  deprivation and the polarization index of Esteban
  and Ray (1994), with the parameter indicating the
  sensitivity to polarization equal to 1.
• Note that the indices are computed using
  individual functioning failures and not incomes.
  Hence the ranking of the countries could differ
  from the usual results.

29
(No Transcript)
30
(No Transcript)
31
Conclusion

• New and rather vague concept
• Has stimulated a lot of discussion and research
• Some initiatives to come up with tractable
  measures and indicators
• Clearly an on-going project with lots of scope
  for further research on different approaches to
  concept, different measurement approaches,
  different indicators.