An Approach to Poverty Dynamics through a Comparison between Luxembourg (1991-1992), France (1989-1990) and Galicia (1992-1993)

This paper was presented in the PACO final conference that was held on the 13 and 14 of June in Budapest. Its particular aim was to show that the Galician panel has enough comparable elements with the PACO data base. In order to achieve such an aim, both cross-sectional and longitudinal analysis were carried out. The basic starting points were the estimation of household poverty indexes and the distribution of net monthly incomes per quintiles. In the cross-sectional analysis, the poverty index and the income distribution are related both with sociodemographic variables of the head of the household. This would result in detecting which are the most common household traits with regard to the economic standard. In order to know the importance that several sources of income have on household poverty it has been necessary to consider their origin. The number of recipients and the index of poor households have been calculated for all of them as well as the percentage of poor households that would result if these sources of income were not received. In the longitudinal analysis, the outcomes of two surveys carried out in successive years are compared. The choice of years arose from the Galician panel, which was undertaken in 1992 and 1993, that is, in order to compare it with those from the countries involved in PACO the closest years were selected. This kind of analysis allows to research for a given period the evolution of both poverty levels and income distribution, from a global viewpoint and also as a result of household changes. These changes concern the numbers of family members as well as the labour situation of the head of the household.