Poverty in Lithuania and Europe at close range

Abstract

Despite a long-term story of poverty and social exclusion research or political actions, the poverty continues to grow all the time in the big part of the world. The poverty does persist in the big part of EU including the Lithuania too. The paper presents the empirical information about the risk of poverty in EU and Lithuania. The influence of social groups and macro factors on poverty is analyzed. The marked risks at poverty levels of the groups of children and working people have been noticed. The risk at poverty level of retired people is conversely much lesser and clearly declining during the past decade. A new macro-econometric multilevel model for determining the determinants of poverty is developed in the paper. The model enables to check the different premises and structural determinants of poverty dynamics and the efficiency of public policy measures as well. A part of present paper material has been presented in the Conference EIIC-2012 at 3-7 Sept. 2012. A great importance of detailed comparative analysis and numerical modeling were noticed in the conference. The text of present paper is substantially updated and supplemented.