Are Italians getting multidimensionally poorer? Evidence on the lack of Equitable and Sustainable Well-being

According to official statistics, the last decade has seen the incidence of absolute poverty in Italy sharply growing from 3.3 in 2005 to 7.3 in 2013 and 7.9 in 2016. Still, standard poverty measures consider only the monetary aspect of poverty, neglecting the multidimensional nature of the phenomenon. In this context, solid empirical evidence, as well as a sounded policy interest, fostered national governments and international institutions on tackling multidimensional poverty. Italy has put very low effort on multidimensional poverty. The goal of this paper is to derive a national MPI (multidimensional poverty index) as according to the Alkire-Foster method, by using the National Italian BES framework (equitable and sustainable wellbeing) as the normative basis for the construction of the index. The contribution of the paper is threefold: i) it aims at enhancing the debate on building national MPIs (especially in developed countries) by proposing as normative ground a national framework for measuring wellbeing; ii) it aims at providing empirical evidence on the level, the composition, and the trends of multidimensional poverty in Italian regions; and iii) it wishes to inform policymakers on the nature of such a multidimensional phenomenon. Results highlight that multidimensional poverty boosts over time with the percentage of individuals considered as multidimensionally poor increasing from 9.5 per cent in 2005 to 17.5 per cent in 2015. Moreover, dimensional breakdown report mixed figures across regions and logistic regression shows that being older, female, from the South and married or widowed increase the probability of facing multidimensional poverty.