Giuseppe Giampaglia

The objective of this paper is to capture those critical traits of long-term poverty that can help policy-makers to design and evaluate social policies in this sector. This work is placed in the frame of Leisering and Leibfried’s theory of life course, and starts by analysing its basic principles. Special attention is devoted to the individualization principle, which is critically re-examined with reference to long-term poverty. Then, longitudinal analysis has been applied to European Community Household Panel data (1994-2001) in order to study individual life courses. The results show a large distance between the North and the South of Italy, in terms of incidence of persistent poverty, and rhythm of entry and exit from long-term poverty. As to socio-demographic and economic factors that affect the dynamics of impoverishment or emancipation-frompoverty processes, gender differences seem to be not very important, while differences in the family composition undoubtedly play a more incisive role. The strongest impact is exerted by the labour market, which shows the highest probabilities of getting out of a poverty condition or, in the opposite hypothesis, of re-entering a situation of need; these outcomes appear reinforced in the case of poverty states which last at least four years of the eight-year period here observed.