Childhood and capability deprivation in Italy: a multidimensional and fuzzy set approach

Abstract

In the last decades, starting with the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Children in 1989, children’s quality of life have received a growing attention in scientific research, as well as in politics. This work aims to gain insights into Italian children’s living conditions and deprivation of capabilities using the Capability Approach, an alternative normative framework for the evaluation of human development, well-being and freedom by thinking in terms of human functionings and capabilities. From a methodological point of view we present an approach based on a fuzzy methodology applied to data from the EU-SILC 2009 ad-hoc module on children. The use of this methodology makes it possible to preserve the richness of the data available from the EU-SILC survey, that include both monetary and non monetary aspects of children deprivation. To get more insides into Italian children living conditions we also combine the fuzzy methodology with the capability approach at a disaggregated level of analysis by three social economic factors (single parent household, household educational level, macro-region of residence). Besides the well-known Italian North/South disparity of financial indicators—confirmed also for households with children—our findings suggest a new duality for Italian children quality of life, given by the multidimensional domains of deprivation internal or external to children’s households

Gender and Children’s Wellbeing: Four Mediterranean Countries in Perspective

“…Dang (2014) also stressed that the fuzzy set theory is a technique used to operationalize the CA and that it is particularly suitable in the CA framework. Accordingly, Potsi et al (2016) adapted the IFR approach in the framework of CA for studying children's capabilities deprivation in Italy, and Potsi et al 2017applied the proposed methodology in a comparative perspective across countries. From a methodological point of view, the IFR approach in the framework of CA is strictly related to the statistical methodology known as latent variable models (Bartholomew and Knott, 1999).…”

“…It is worth noting that due to methodological constraints, both 2 "$ and 2 "#$ at the country level are equal to the At Risk of Poverty Rate (ARPR), even if the meaning of these indicators is completely different. The two fuzzy indicators measure the degree of deprivation, whereas the ARPR is the traditional poverty measure, that is, the share of people with disposable income less than the poverty threshold, which is set at the 60% of the national median equivalised disposable income (again, see Potsi et al 2016 for further details).…”

“…To organize our research and classify children's conceptualization of capabilities, we chose the categories presented in Potsi et al (2016), as we will explain in section 4.…”

“…Indeed, at least for Italy, this type of family combines also another determinant factor of the phenomenon: large families are more likely to live in the south of the country. Potsi et al (2016) further investigated this aspect by differentiating the analysis in terms of Italian geographical macro-areas. The present findings that confirm this empirical evidence and add new information through a cross-country comparison.…”

“…To contribute to these debates, this paper uses the CA approach to study gender disparities in children's wellbeing. In particular, it applies a methodology based on the multidimensional fuzzy approach (Lemmi et al, 2010), adapted to the framework of the CA by Potsi et al (2016), in a cross-country perspective.…”