While value judgments render a purely rational and scientific solution impossible, a particular definition of poverty may still be widely recognized and accepted. One such widely accepted notion of poverty has evolved recently for the European Union. Following the Union’s commitment to “combat social exclusion” and the need to monitor progress towards a reduction of poverty, a framework of statistical indicators has finally been endorsed at the Laeken European Council in 2001. These indicators on social inclusion derive from the so-called structural indicators, which had been established earlier to measure progress towards the Lisbon objectives and have been the subject of an expert evaluation (Atkinson et al. 2002). Four basic dimensions of social inclusionare considered in that framework: income inequality, unemployment, education and health.
The framework is organized along three hierarchical tiers, with a core set of 10 primary indicators and 8 secondary indicators giving additional information. The definition of a third level of indicators is left to the individual country’s action plans to highlight areas of particular national relevance and support the interpretation of the primary and secondary indicators.
