EUROSTAT
Directorate F: Social statistics
Unit F-4: Quality of Life
Doc. 2014/1/7/EN
document for point 7of the agenda
Dimension: material living conditions
Housing deprivation and abundance
5th meeting of the expert group on quality of life indicators
Luxembourg, 10/11 April 2014
Bech – Room A3/045
Housing deprivation and abundance
1.Introduction
During the previous meetings of the Expert Group it has been clearly stressed that either averages or other central tendency measures alone cannot give an adequate view of each and every variable within the framework, and in most cases, additional information on their whole distribution must be provided.
Moreover, even though public policies should focus on its lower part –i.e., those who are more deprived–, it is also important to pay attention to those who are well off. Combined with the analysis of joint distributions, either cumulative deprivations or abundance can be discovered.
A measure based on high-medium-low values is a straightforward approach to depicting the distribution and including both groups of individuals or households. An indicator based on shares of the population who are either living in overcrowded dwellings or enjoy pretty good conditions of space and privacy is presented as a case study.
The experts are invited to discuss the feasibility of an approach based on h-m-l measures as an overall criterion to be applied to the scoreboard of indicators whenever possible and to endorse this particular implementation
2.measurement
The current framework shows, under the topic Material conditions / Housing conditions, two indicators focusing on objective conditions of the dwelling (alongside an additional indicator on subjective appreciation to be implemented upon the results of the EU-SILC 2013 ad hoc module), which give information on the share of population deprived of an adequate structure of the dwelling or basic sanitary amenities. They are currently shown as 0 –1 variables.
Subtopic / IndicatorHousing conditions / Share of total population living in a dwelling with a leaking roof, damp walls, floors or foundation, or rot in window frames of floor
Share of total population having neither a bath, nor a shower, nor indoor flushing toilet in their household
Satisfaction with accommodation (under development in SILC 2013)
They can be complemented with an indicator on space and privacy within the household, using the data collected through the variable (HH030) Number of rooms available to the household and the 2 databases currently derived from it (after comparing its value with the minimum number of rooms needed for the household):
-Overcrowding rate (for the total population, ilc_lvho05a - ilc_lvho05q)
-Share of people living in under-occupied dwellings (ilc_lvho50a - ilc_lvho50d)[1]
Both Overcrowding rates as well as Shares of people living in under-occupied dwellings include by breakdowns sex and poverty status, household type and income quintile, tenure status, and degree of urbanisation, which are also available for Overcrowding rates.
Share of people living in under-occupied dwellings, selected countries, 2005 – 2012
A combination of both databases can offer a Low-Medium-High score by just considering the former as “Lowˮ, whereas the latter corresponds to “Highˮ value. The share of population not included in any of those categories corresponds to the “Mediumˮ level.In this specific case, the corresponding distribution can also be found for almost each and every breakdown of interest, such as sex, age, income quintile, degree of urbanization or poverty status.
This offers, through a unique indicator,an overview of housing conditions regarding dwelling sizefrom a twofold perspective: firstly, from a strict health-related point of view, considering space as basic requirement for preventing health issues as the WHO has pointed out; secondly, when it comes to well-being, the lack of privacy seems to be determinant since studies indicate that crowding is stressful particularly for some specific subpopulations such as children or women (see e.g Ewans et al., 2002[2] or Regoeczi).[3]
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Graph 2.Low/Medium/High score indicator for space and privacy within the household, 2012, Total population (source: SILC)
Countries been sorted from the from the smallest to the largest Overcrowding rate (equal to share of people with a "Low" score)
Graph 3. Low/Medium/High score indicator for space and privacy within the household, 2012, First quintile (source: SILC)
Countries been sorted from the from the smallest to the largest Overcrowding rate (equal to share of people with a "Low" score)
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Since all the subgroup headcounts and shares –corresponding to low, medium and high scores– have been drawn from the same population, not surprisingly figures are coherent and countries with higher shares of people who are well off regarding space at home are also those where, normally, the rates of people who are worse off tend to be lower. So, looking at the total population, the 4 countries which perform the best regarding "Low" values –i.e., fewer people living in overcrowded dwellings– are Belgium (1.6%), The Netherlands (2.5%), Cyprus (2.8%) and Malta (4.0%), which are also those which perform the best regarding "High" values (73.0%, 60.3%, 70.8%, 78.6%) respectively, since Spain –the 5th country– is below Luxembourg (57.7% and 58.8% respectively).
Graph 4. Distributions according to Low/Medium/High score indicator for space and privacy within the household for a subset of countries - People at-risk-of-poverty, 2012 (source: SILC).
3.Conclusions
A measurement of space and privacy within the dwelling, based on a LMH approach, can be used under the topic Housing conditions upon the data provided by the variable Number of rooms available to the household, in order to complement already existing information on the structure and amenities of the dwelling.
However, some cautions must be observed:
-Specifically for space, a proper measure would be betterprovided in the form of total floor surface area for each individual, and therefore the availability of rooms should be rather considered asan appropriate proxy.
-It is not a relative but an absolute measure of deprivation (or abundance) where the thresholds do not depend on specific values for each country –as happens in the case of at-risk-of-poverty rates and the 60% of the median equivalised income– and therefore cultural differences could play a significant role which is not going to be taken into account.
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[1] This database has been produced after discussion at last EG meeting as a positive counterpart (able to accommodate a larger household than currently) of overcrowding.
[2] Ewans, G., Lercher, P and Kofler, W.W.:"Crowding and Children’s Mental Health: The Role of House Type". Journal of Environmental Psychology (2002) 22: 221-231, Elsevier.
[3]Regoeczi, W.:"Crowding in Context: An Examination of the Differential Responses of Men and Women to High-Density Living Environments". Journal of Health and Social Behavior, 49(3): 254-268, Sage, 2008.