Intersectional Disparities in Material Deprivation: Evidence from Switzerland

Material deprivation captures the concrete experience of shortfalls in standard of living. Prior research on material deprivation largely focused on additive individual determinants, neglecting the multiplicative nature of demographic categorizations, limiting our understanding of material deprivation at the intersection of social attributes. Using data from the Swiss Household Panel, this study estimated the predictive power of five intersectional attributes (age, gender, education, marital status, and nationality) for deprivation in the Swiss context. Results show that educational attainment, marital status, and nationality had the strongest predictive power for deprivation. More than a third of the between‐strata variance was captured by intersectional interactions but was not explained by the additive effect of social attributes. Efforts to alleviate material deprivation would benefit from understanding the resident population’s intersectional identities for more precisely targeted interventions.