rivista italiana di economia demografia e statistica - Sieds

60
Volume LXIII nn. 3-4 – Luglio-Dicembre 2009
Table 2 – Tenure status distribution and average rent at market price at PPP by Country.
Tenure status
Tenants below
Tenants at
the market price
Country
Dwelling market price
or in a
owners and (average
subsidized
rent)
market
Free tenants
IT 72.1 13.6 (363 €) 4.8 9.5
ES 81.0 8.7 (470 €) 2.5 7.8
FR 60.2 12.1 (440 €) 23.4 4.3
UK 72.0 13.2 (502 €) 13.6 1.2
We turn now to analyze the effects on overall poverty and inequality. In table 3
poverty indicators (at risk of poverty rate and median at risk of poverty gap) and
concentration index (Gini index) are shown 3 . Taking the disposable income net of nonmonetary
components as a baseline case, the inclusion of IR causes a general reduction
in inequality indexes. Regardless the percentage of households at risk of poverty, we
can observe a decrease of this share by adding the figurative income, more marked for
Spain. Italy becomes the Country with the highest incidence (16% of the households),
similar to UK, while FR shows the lowest figures in both cases. Moreover, Italy is the
unique Country where the intensity of poverty, measured by the median at risk of
poverty gap, increases.
Table 3 also shows that inequality, measured through the Gini index, decreases
when IR is computed in the household income. The highest decrease is in ES, while the
lowest is in FR; nonetheless, FR is the Country with the least income concentration in
both case, while UK, accordingly with literature on income distribution, remains the
most unequal Country. Two are the general effects of IR on inequality measures. On
one side, it enlargers the differences in income between market tenants and the other
subgroups; on the opposite, since the distribution of IR is less dispersed than monetary
income, it reduces the total inequality among the population: for many dwelling owners
in the lowest tail of income distribution the house is the largest asset and the IR income
is a larger proportion of the household income in respect of the households in the upper
tail of the distribution (Istat, 2008; Abs, 2008). This result is in line with several studies
on IR, such D’Ambrosio and Gigliarano (2007), Marical et al. (2006) and Frick and
Grabka (2003).
The above results show the overall effects of IR. Decomposing the population, i.e.
by tenure status or by the age of the dwelling responsible, there are relevant differences
between the subgroups, with a general improvement of the relative position for
3 The results for income without including IR are about in line with the ones in the Eurostat
website. Differences are due to the households dropped for missing variables of interest.