Inequality and Poverty in Greece: Changes in Times of Crisis

Eirini Andriopoulou, Alexandros Karakitsios () and Panos Tsakloglou
Additional contact information
Alexandros Karakitsios: Athens University of Economics and Business

No 11006, IZA Discussion Papers from Institute of Labor Economics (IZA)

Abstract: The Greek crisis was the deepest and longest ever recorded in an OECD country in the postwar period. Output declined by over a quarter and disposable income by more than 40%, while the unemployment rate exceeded 27%. The paper explores the effects of the crisis on the level and the structure of aggregate inequality and poverty using the data of EU-SILC for the period 2007–2014. The results show that inequality rose but the magnitude of the change varies across indices. The recorded increases are larger when the indices used are relatively more sensitive to changes close to the bottom of the income distribution. Unlike claims often made in the public discourse, the elderly improved their relative position in the income distribution while there was substantial deterioration in the relative position of the enlarged group of the unemployed. The contribution of disparities between educational groups to aggregate inequality declined while that of disparities between socio-economic groups rose. All poverty indicators suggest that poverty increased substantially, especially when "anchored" poverty lines are used. Substantial changes are observed regarding the structure of poverty. Despite an increase in the population share of households headed by pensioners, their contribution to aggregate poverty declined considerably, with a corresponding increase in the contribution of households headed by unemployed persons. The changes are starker when distribution-sensitive poverty indices are utilized.

Keywords: decomposition analysis; poverty; inequality; Greece (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: D31 I31 I32 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 31 pages
Date: 2017-09
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-lma
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (9)

Published - published in: D. Katsikas, D. A. Sotiropoulos, M. Zafiropoulou (eds.), Socioeconomic Fragmentation and Exclusion in Greece under the Crisis, 2018

Downloads: (external link)
https://docs.iza.org/dp11006.pdf (application/pdf)

Related works:
Working Paper: Inequality and poverty in Greece: Changes in times of crisis (2017)
Working Paper: Inequality and Poverty in Greece:Changes in Times of Crisis (2017)
Working Paper: Inequality and poverty in Greece: Changes in times of crisis (2017)
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:iza:izadps:dp11006

Ordering information: This working paper can be ordered from
IZA, Margard Ody, P.O. Box 7240, D-53072 Bonn, Germany

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in IZA Discussion Papers from Institute of Labor Economics (IZA) IZA, P.O. Box 7240, D-53072 Bonn, Germany. Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Holger Hinte ().