Perception of poverty. Individual, household and social enviromental determinants

This paper aims to show to what extent self-perception of poverty is affected by respondent/household socio-economic characteristics and by social capital endowment of household place of residence in order to disclose the primary risk factors of family poverty status. Such evidence would help central and local government to define those economic and social goals which should receive more attention by current policies with the purpose of advancing towards the eradication of poverty. In order to purse this aim the logit model has been applied to analyze answers to the dichotomous transformation of the following question taken from the 2008 Survey on Household Income and Wealth (SHIW) of the Bank of Italy CONSIDERING YOUR MONTHLY DISPOSABLE INCOME, IS YOUR HOUSEHOLD ABLE TO MAKE ENDS MEET:(1) WITH GREAT DIFFICULTY,(2)WITH DIFFICULTY,(3)WITH SOME DIFFICULTY,(4)WITHOUT DIFFICULTY,(5)WITH EASE,(6)WITH GREAT EASE? The results show a relevant effect on self-perception of poverty of both respondent /household socio-economic characteristics and social capital. In particular, the components social relationships and social engagement contribute to reduce the risk of a self-perceived poverty. Actually, networks characterized by relationships of trust are key determinants of human welfare as people socio-economic vulnerability is reduced as well as the resources they need only for the fact that they must deal with risk and avert major losses.