This study attempts to document the state and nature of inequality and poverty in Greece using the primary consumption expenditure data of two Household Expenditure Surveys conducted in 1974 and 1982. Chapter 1 provides an outline of recent developments in the Greek economy, a survey of the literature on inequality and poverty in Greece and a comparison of the above data with data from other sources. In Chapter 2 it is argued that the distribution of consumption expenditure per equivalent adult is a fairly good approximation to the (unobservable) distribution of economic welfare, and three models of equivalence scales for the cost of children are estimated. Based on these results, the distributions of consumption expenditure per equivalent adult are constructed for both survey years. Chapter 3 provides the results of measurement and decomposition of inequality. One-way decomposition is carried out when the population is grouped according to ten factors, of which five are used to subdivide the population into small homogeneous socioeconomic groups for the purposes of the multivariate decomposition of inequality. The main finding of the one-way decompositions is that disparities "between groups" play a far less important role in determining aggregate inequality than disparities "within-groups". Even in the multivariate decomposition, variations "between-groups" account for only one third of aggregate inequality in 1974 and for even less in 1982. The results of measuremenat nd decompositiono f poverty, reportedi n Chapter4 , suggest that poverty is closely associated with certain occupational characteristics of the household head. These characteristics are employment in the agricultural sector or no employment. Households headed by farmers and retired persons account for around two thirds of aggregate poverty in both survey years. Intertemporal changesi n inequality and poverty are examined in Chapter5 . It is demonstrated that inequality and relative poverty declined substantially between 1974 and 1982, while the decline in absolute poverty was spectacular. The impact on inequality of changes in the structure of the population was negligible, but the improvement in the educational level of HH heads had a strong negative effect on poverty. Further, the results of some cross-country inequality and welfare comparisons presented in this chapter show that inequality is higher, and welfare lower, in Greece than in most of the other EEC countries. Finally, Chapter 6 summarizes the principal findings and discusses briefly their policy implications
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:bl.uk/oai:ethos.bl.uk:300741 |
| Date | January 1989 |
| Creators | Tsakloglou, Panagiotis |
| Publisher | University of Warwick |
| Source Sets | Ethos UK |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Electronic Thesis or Dissertation |
| Source | http://wrap.warwick.ac.uk/55889/ |
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