Material and social deprivation in Italy: an analysis on a regional basis

The existence of an inverse association between socioeconomic status and the incidence of most diseases is well-established in literature: higher rates of morbidity and mortality have been reported among lower socioeconomic groups in many European countries. However, it’s an open question which component of socioeconomic status affects health most, and how that relationship should be measured. The relation between socioeconomic factors and health inequality may be proved at the individual level, or at the geographic-area level. In this paper we follow the second stream of literature, i.e studies on deprivation relating the state of disadvantage suffered by an individual, with the living conditions of the area where the individual resides. The aim of this study is to measure two different conceptions of deprivation, in order to develop two different indicators of deprivation: the first concerning material deprivation, through the study of direct variables, and the second related to social deprivation, calculated using indirect variables. The proposed indicators have been validated respectively with life expectancy at birth and a composite index of security, in order to determine which of the two indices affects more the living conditions. The final conclusion of this work leads to establishing the existence of two different deprivation indicators for 20 Italian regions, both validated and recommended as measures of the material and social disadvantage of one region compared to the other.