The Forms and Determinants of Social Exclusion in the European Union: The Case of Luxemburg

The paper investigates the social exclusion process in the European Union (EU), particularly in Luxemburg, addressing both conceptual and empirical issues. It examines aspects such as: the most appropriate definition of social exclusion for the case of Luxemburg, the way economic and social disadvantages cumulate within the social exclusion process, and the main determinants of social exclusion, income poverty and deprivation. To analyze the topics mentioned above, different econometric models have been applied.

Rethinking multidimensional poverty through a multi-criteria analysis

The risk of poverty or social exclusion constitutes the pivotal multidimensional indicator of living conditions in the European Union. Nevertheless, it only reports the proportion of individuals at risk and disregards the depth of poverty. The indicator therefore overlooks situations of possible vulnerable groups just above the threshold and is not sensitive to all dimensions in which the individual is at risk. In this paper we propose an alternative multi-criteria based approach that overcomes these problems. Our measure captures information about the level of achievement in each dimension of all persons along the distribution and evaluates to what extent the concurrence of multiple deprivations reinforces their disadvantage. This approach permits diverse ways of aggregation with different degrees of substitutability among the achievements of each dimension according to context-specific social preferences. We illustrate our approach with an empirical analysis of 28 countries using the European Union Statistics on Income and Living Conditions database for 2016. The results reveal that work intensity may be regarded as the most determining factor in analyses of multidimensional poverty across European countries. Our measures unmask how countries with similar proportions of individuals at risk of poverty or social exclusion hide very different conditions of multidimensional poverty and highlight the variety of socioeconomic realities existing behind the dichotomy imposed by the usual ‘at risk of poverty or social exclusion’ rate.     

社会排斥对地位消费行为倾向的影响

情境因素会导致消费者心理状态发生变化,对他们后续消费行为产生影响。基于自我肯定理论,本文探讨了社会排斥这一情境因素对消费者地位消费行为倾向的影响机理,认为消费者需要借助地位消费行为带来的自我肯定效用,以提升由社会排斥导致的自我价值感知威胁而诱发的自尊感知下降。以MBA、公司员工、在校本科生为被试,通过四项实验研究,本文发现,社会排斥能对消费者的地位消费行为倾向产生促进作用;此促进作用通过自我价值感知和自尊感知的链式中介效应传导;遭遇社会排斥后,若获得其他途径的自我肯定机会,则此促进作用会减弱。     

社会组织与农村贫困主体消除的多元化

贫困所描述的现象是由于制度缺失而导致的诸多社会现象中的一种。消除贫困是摆在中国政府面前的一项艰巨任务。我国目前农村贫困现象非常严重。政府一直是消除农村贫困的唯一主体。由于其自身所具备的特点,身处国家体制外社会组织参与扶贫对于缓解和消灭农村贫困现象,提高农村贫困救助的效率,实现农村贫困救助主体的多元化有良好的促进作用。