Structure of National Perceptions of Social Needs Across EU Countries |
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Authors: | Paul Dickes Alessio Fusco Eric Marlier |
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Institution: | (1) CEPS/INSTEAD Research Institute, B.P. 48, L-4501 Differdange, Luxembourg;(2) University of Nancy 2, Nancy Cedex, France;(3) CEMAFI – University of Nice Sophia Antipolis, Nice, France;; |
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Abstract: | Back in 1975, the European Union (EU) Council of Ministers defined the poor as “individuals or families whose resources are
so small as to exclude them from the minimum acceptable way of life of the Member State in which they live”. This widely quoted
definition leaves room for discussion about what can be considered a “minimum acceptable way of life” in different countries
and thus also whether national perceptions of minimum standards vary from one country to the next. The paper explores this
latter issue by exploiting the first EU dataset allowing a comparative analysis of the items which citizens in the different
Member States consider to be necessary for people to have an “acceptable” standard of living in the country where they live.
It assesses the (in)variance of the structure of the perception of social needs between countries on the basis of an extension
of the multidimensional scaling (MDS) method, and shows a high level of congruence between the 27 national patterns. An important
consequence of this result is that it supports the approach which consists of measuring deprivation on the basis of a same
set of (validated) items across all the Member States. |
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