Download GDP PER CAPITA IS NOT SUFFISANT FOR A GOOD

REACTIONS FROM EUROSTAT
Anne CLEMENCEAU
Head of Unit "Living conditions and social protection statistics"
Eurostat
GDP per capita is not sufficient for a good measurement of economic welfare.
On economic welfare, Eurostat work is currently focused on GDP per capita, poverty and
deprivation statistics. Eurostat recognises that there is a need for additional work on economic
welfare to be developed at EU level. A lot of ideas have been presented during this seminar ranging
from:
•
GDP/per capita;
•
Looking at the use of social indicators;
•
Making use of existing SILC information on components such as housing, environment;
•
Looking at extension of the SILC income concepts;
•
Extending SILC information, for example by adding altitudinal questions.
Eurostat will as a first step make increased use and dissemination of the information on economic
welfare available in SILC and then make an action plan for future work on this issue.
The current 'at-risk-of-poverty' indicator is problematic.
It is clear for the Commission that the ranking of countries obtained from the current 'at-risk-ofpoverty' can be misleading. But this indicator is part of an overall portfolio (the portfolios of
overarching and Laeken indicators) and is to be looked at together with the 'at-risk-of-poverty'
threshold. In addition, efforts are currently being put on the development of deprivation indicators
that will be included in the portfolio.
We should not forget that the adoption of the portfolio of indicators is under the responsibility of
the European Council and not of the European Commission. But Eurostat can commit to develop in
the future some methodological / research projects on this topic.
A lot of ideas were put on the table in this seminar, including the budget standard approach, the
social security threshold, a new perspective of the poverty/line, poverty line based on actual needs.
Eurostat will consider all these proposals.
It is important for the multi-dimensional aspect of social inclusion to be taken on board.
Eurostat fully supports this recommendation. Multi-dimensional aspects of social inclusion are of
prime interest. Eurostat together with the Employment, Social Affairs and Equal Opportunities DG
of the Commission and the Indicators Sub-Group (ISG) of the Social Protection Committee is
currently working on this issue and is using a step-by-step approach:
•
First step in the short term, development of deprivation indicators based on existing items for
several dimensions, including 'economic strain' and 'housing' dimensions.
•
Second step, a module to the SILC survey relating to material deprivation will be in the field
in 2009 and will in the long term allow reviewing of the annual deprivation component of this
instrument.
It is recommended to develop a SILC module including subjective indicators and measures
reflecting attitudes towards the welfare system.
This is a good proposal that Eurostat will carefully consider and discuss with the ISG even though
some National Statistical Institutes are clearly against introducing subjective questions in the SILC
instrument.
Having good meta-data is of prime importance to the users.
Meta-data are of course extremely important and Eurostat is putting a lot of efforts to have as
complete and as up-to-date as possible meta-data information allowing users to have a good
overview of the comparability and harmonisation of the data.
2