Technical Paper on Implications of Income Pooling and Household Decision-making for the Measurement of Poverty and Deprivation:An Analysis of the SILC 2010 Special Module for Ireland

A technical paper on Implications of income pooling and household decision-making for the measurement of poverty and deprivation has been published online today.

The technical paper focuses on the core assumption in conventional poverty measurement that income is shared within households to the benefit of all household members. It draws on a special module in the 2010 Survey on Income and Living Conditions (SILC) to test this assumption. The paper examines aspects of the household’s financial regime, including which household members receive income, the extent to which income is contributed for the benefit of other household members and responsibility for financial decision-making.

The technical paper is an output of the Department’s research programme with the Economic and Social Research Institute (ESRI) for the Analysis and Measurement of Poverty and Social Exclusion, under the National Action Plan for Social Inclusion 2007-2016 (NAPinclusion).

The authors are Dorothy Watson and Bertrand Maitre of the ESRI, and Sara Cantillon of UCD.