REDUCING POVERTY AS A DRIVER OF DEVELOPMENT

It is ten years after Lisbon and in the year dedicated to poverty alleviation that this paper is written in order to investigate the implications of the decisions regarding poverty reduction taken by the EU. We present a simple comparison of the "risks of poverty" in European countries in 2000 and 2008, before and after transfers, and our finding is a positive effect of the policies towards poverty alleviation, even if the risk of poverty is increasing. By studying the correlation between percentage of people that fall below the poverty line and GDP per capita, we do not observe a whole diverse situation in Europe, with only few minor differences between rich and poor countries. We also discuss the importance of alternative approaches in estimating poverty, by means of a multidimensional method which considers a multitude of aspects in the quality of life.