Achille Lemmi

The Fuzzy Set Approach to Multidimensional Poverty: the Case of Italy in the 1990s

Most of the methods designed for the analysis of poverty share two main limitations: (i) they are unidimensional, i.e. refer to only one proxy of poverty such as low income or consumption expenditure; (ii) they need to dichotomize the population into the poor and the non-poor by means of the so-called poverty line.

Multidimensional and Longitudinal Poverty: an Integrated Fuzzy Approach

When poverty is viewed as a matter of degree in contrast to the conventional poor/non-poor dichotomy, that is, as a fuzzy state, two additional aspects are introduced into the analysis. (i) The choice of membership functions i.e. quantitative specification of individuals’ or households’ degrees of poverty and deprivation. (ii) And the choice of rules for the manipulation of the resulting fuzzy sets, rules defining their complements, intersections, union and aggregation. Specifically, for longitudinal analysis of poverty using the fuzzy set approach, we need joint membership functions covering more than one time period, which have to be constructed on the basis of the series of cross-sectional membership functions over those time periods.

Poverty and deprivation of immigrants vs. natives in Italy

Purpose - – Italy has become a migrant receiving country and it has to face with the problem of social inclusion of immigrants. The purpose of this paper is to measure the gap on poverty and deprivation between immigrants and natives since manifest conditions of both of them are an important signal, although not exclusively, of social exclusion. Design/methodology/approach - – Poverty analysis typically relies on a single monetary variable such as income and it is characterized by a simple dichotomization of the population into poor and non-poor. In this paper the authors stress the importance of using a multidimensional and fuzzy approach in order to study disparities between immigrants and natives. The authors cover several of the multifaceted aspects of resources necessary to maintain adequate living standards in a developed country. With the fuzzy methodology, the authors also overcome any limitation of the conventional approach based on the simple dichotomization of the phenomenon. Findings - – The empirical analysis is based on data from two official surveys. The authors find that between Italian and immigrant households there are significant differences in poverty and deprivation levels, with a strong disadvantage for the latter. The authors argue that any serious attempt to reduce poverty and deprivation must now include comprehensive reforms in the nations immigration policies if they are to be taken seriously. Originality/value - – The paper makes an original contribution to the understanding of inequality between immigrants and natives, by studying a complex phenomena such as poverty and deprivation in a multidimensional perspective using a fuzzy approach.

A comparative analysis of school-to-work transitions in the European Union1

The present paper describes some aspects of ‘school-to-work’ transition by analyzing the employment situation of individuals as a function of the time elapsed since the completion of education or training. Our perspective is interdisciplinary, comparative and dynamic, with special focus on the patterns in southern European countries. In the literature, most of the studies have had the basic approach of constructing indicators based on retrospective information on the time of first leaving continuous education, and current information on status and characteristics of the persons economic activity – expressing the status of activity as a function of the time elapsed since leaving continuous education. In this approach, essentially cross-sectional (though in part retrospective) information is interpreted as if it pertains to real cohorts. Much of this comparative analysis of school-to-work transitions in EU countries has been based on the EU Labour Force Survey, the 2000 round of which incorporated a special module to collect information on the subject. Our basic approach is to use the longitudinal data from the European Community Household Panel to identify, at the time of each wave, the persons most recently completed education and training, and study this in relation to the persons current employment situation and other characteristics as a function of the time elapsed since that completion. Hence, in form at least, our approach is similar to that of earlier studies based on the LFS, though there are considerable differences in substantive content and statistical methodology resulting from the use of different types of data. We also demonstrate how data from a panel survey may be cumulated over time to obtain a more adequate sample size.

Fuzzy Monetary Poverty Measures under a Dagum Income Distributive Hypothesis

This chapter explores the potential of introducing the Dagum distribution into the IFR (Integrated Fuzzy Relative) poverty measure. This implies using the Dagum model for fitting the empirical cumulative distribution that forms one of the components of the membership function to the set of poor in the IFR methodology. Moreover, we propose a heterogeneous Dagum model in order to allow the form of income distribution to vary with personal characteristics. In this way, we are able to make comparisons across sub-groups of the population between the traditional and the IFR measures of poverty.

A parametric model for estimating fuzzy poverty measures and their standard errors

In this paper we propose a parametric model for the membership function that is usually defined in the fuzzy approach to poverty analysis called IFR (Integrated Fuzzy and Relative). Our proposal may be added to the present literature because we are interested to the overall shape of the membership function instead of using only empirical average values as is usually done. This approach allows us to give an economic interpretation of the parameters involved in the theoretical distribution that makes the comparison between monetary and non monetary indicators and among several populations easier. Empirical results show significant differences in monetary and non-monetary poverty between Southern and Northern regions in Italy.

Firm Performance Analysis with Panel Data

This paper deals with an “ecumenical” approach to the productive processes analysis. In particular we suggest a research strategy based on five known estimation methods for the production frontier function one of each characterised by a proper type of flexibility in results evaluation. In such a way, we obtain through a bootstrap methodology, an interval estimation of the efficiency score of any firm.