Risk of Poverty in Southern Europe

We analyze whether the risk of poverty deteriorates with the crisis in France, Greece, Italy, Spain, for different categories of households, individual features, and policy instruments, such as the regional European Structural Funds. We find that the impact of the economic recession was heterogeneous, deteriorating the status of temporary workers, self-employed, single, and female-headed households, while the risk of poverty decreased relatively for larger households with dependent children and elderly members. We also find that targeted funds towards human capital investment are associated to decreasing the risk of poverty, but the crisis slowed down their effects.