Dynamics of multidimensional poverty in Italy, through the crisis.

The current economic crisis is being producing heavy effects on Italian societies, both in terms of income and overall well-being. In this paper, we analyze the evolution of multidimensional poverty in Italy over the last year, to investigate the effects of the crisis. Data come from different waves of the Multipurpose Survey on Families, held by Istat on a yearly basis. The paper focuses on two subset of variables, one pertaining to objective indicators of material deprivation, the other pertaining to subjective well-being, studying levels, patterns, interrelations and dynamics of these two broad aspects of quality of life. The variables involved in the study are of an ordinal nature. To handle them properly, a new assessment methodology based on partially ordered set theory is employed and its result are compared to more traditional approaches, namely the counting approach developed by Alkire and Foster.