A European Union Approach to Material Deprivation using EU-SILC and Eurobarometer data

The paper discusses methodological issues raised by the construction of indicators on material deprivation, which is defined here as an enforced lack of a combination of items depicting some aspects of living conditions related to housing conditions, possession of durables and capacity to afford basic requirements. More specifically, its focus is on the selection of items, their dimensional structure, their aggregation in a synthetic measure and their weighting. The paper also puts in perspective material deprivation and income-based poverty indicators to emphasise the complementarity of the two approaches. It covers the European Union countries available in the 2007 Community Statistics on Income and Living Conditions (EU-SILC) users’ data base.