Measuring and detecting situations of need and deprivation using Graded Response models

ABSTRACT

We exploit information on living conditions of households to build an estimation of their degree of need and deprivation. The information we use is often subjective and we assume that deprivation is a latent variable that we estimate with item response theory models on Italian data. Then, we relate this estimated trait to more objective and observable variables that thus could be used within policy actions and welfare programmes to pinpoint situations where the estimated deprivation is high.

KEYWORDS:

• Item Response Theory
• IRT
• deprivation
• welfare programmes

JEL CLASSIFICATION:

• I32
• I38
• C40

Acknowledgments

The analysis is based on data obtained from European Commission, Eurostat, contract RPP 14/2018-EU-SILC-AES-SES. Eurostat has no responsibility for the results and conclusions which are those of the researchers only.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes

¹ Graphs for these curves are available on requests.