In-work poverty and regional disparities. An analysis of the relationship between work intensity and the probability of being and feeling poor across Italian territories

Abstract

Work intensity is considered one relevant factor in shaping the risk of experiencing in-work poverty, i.e., being a worker with a household income below the relative poverty line. However, little attention has been paid to how work intensity is associated with workers' subjective poverty (i.e., their feeling of being in-work poor) and to how this association varies across geographical areas. Therefore, the present work intends to fill this gap and investigate the relationship between work-intensity and the risk of experiencing in-work poverty, in both objective and subjective terms as well as differences among local contexts, i.e., regions and degrees of urbanisation. The analysis is based on 2018 cross-sectional data from the Italian module of the Eu-Silc survey. Empirical results show that work intensity is negatively associated with both objective and subjective in-work poverty, but the relation is stronger with the former. Furthermore, densely, intermediate and thinly populated areas show similar trends, whereas there is a persistent gap between, on the one hand, the North-Center of Italy and, on the other, the South, which has the highest risk of objective and subjective in-work poverty. However, the latter is also the area where the association between work intensity and in-work poverty is stronger.