European Measures of Poverty and “Social Exclusion”: Material Deprivation, Consumption, and Life Satisfaction

The conventional view of poverty in the European Union countries is based on a relative measure, which defines all those with incomes below 60 percent of the median as poor. In the U.S., poverty is defined according to an absolute measure—the federal poverty line computed by the Census Bureau—which was $21,200 for a family of four in 2008 (somewhat higher in Alaska and Hawaii). In tallying up national rates of poverty, both the absolute and relative measures are adjusted for family size. Although these income-based measures generate social indicators that are concrete, plausible, and convenient to use, they fail to convey the experiential quality of poverty as a condition of life—living hungry, cold, unable to meet normal social expectations, and in dread of what the future holds. They also overlook the possession of other resources and sources of support that can alleviate the conditions of poverty. Several of the papers presented at the Joint OECD/University of Maryland International Conference on Measuring Poverty, Income Inequality, and Social Exclusion: Lessons from Europe aim to overcome these omissions by assessing levels of material deprivation and including measures of consumption and wealth in addition to income.