Small Area Methods for Monitoring of Poverty and Living conditions in EU
Unipi Team Leader: Monica Pratesi, Department of Economics and Management
The Chair on Small Area Methods for Monitoring of Poverty and Living conditions in EU (SAMPL-EU) aimed at introducing students and stakeholders to the study of local statistics on poverty and living conditions in order to provide reliable evidence to monitor EU regional policy. The aim of the Chair has been then threefold:i. enhancing the students’ and stakeholders’ abilities to understand and analyze the existing set of poverty and living conditions indicators in Europe (multidimensional and Laeken poverty indicators), (un)employment rates, subjective well-being indicators;ii. building up and teaching a statistical tool-box of Small Area Methods based on traditional and new techniques of survey data collection and integration in order to produce local values and estimates of the indicators for the monitoring of the effects of European Regional Policy;iii. educating the students to communicate the results of the Small Area Methods to the stakeholders, to feed the evidence–based process of policy making with flash-estimates and to provide guidance on what might be the problems that arise in the reliability of the estimates and in the quantitative evaluation of regional policy.The academic added value of the proposal resided in the deepening of the themes treated in the curriculum in official statistics of the Master of Science in Economics of the University of Pisa. This insight is unique and novel in the curricula at graduate level in Pisa, and as far as I know in Italy and Europe.Studies on European Union are promoted focusing on poverty and living conditions across Europe and on the existing production process of European official data and indicators both at national and international level. The proposal has an impact at International level because the Master of Science in Economics is in the EMOS network and the content of the courses and events under the Chair can be attended also in a distance-learning format as we are doing for the EMOS Spring School.The three aims of the Chair have been developed jointly throughout a diverse set of activities. Anyway I would say that aim i) and ii) have been implemented mainly by the two main teaching activities (European Local Indicators of Poverty and living Conditions: traditional and new survey techniques in the era of data deluge and big data and Analysis of European Data by Small Area methods) and the five intensive courses deepening the survey methods and the national accounting system (I term) and the Small Area Estimation Methodologies (SAE) (II term). Aim iii) required and involved many Seminars by experts in Official Statistics and SAE, Multidimensional Indicators and R software complemented and enriched the program. During this activities, fertilization of different fields of research drove the students and the researchers involved to the compilation of the Book containing the main teaching materials (available and downloadable from the website) and to the participation to the final Workshop "Small Area Methods and Living Conditions Indicators in EU Poverty Studies in the era of data deluge and big data". Research results are also summarized in three research papers.
Start date: 01-09-2015
End date: 31-08-2018
EU Grant: 50.000 €
Project website: http://sampleu.ec.unipi.it/
