Empirical modeling of deprivation contagion among social exclusion dimensions *

Over recent years, and more evidently since the EU Lisbon summit in 2000, social exclusion – or better, social inclusion – has become an increasingly important issue on the agenda of many European institutions, being also clearly present in many policy debates in Europe and elsewhere. This has triggered a renewed interest in the topic from both institutional and academic spheres. ¹ We have seen, for instance, considerable advances in its measurement (Bossert, D’Ambrosio and Peragine, 2007; Chakravarty and D’Ambrosio, 2003), in the empirical identification of the socially excluded (Whelan, Layte and Maitre, 2002; Tsakloglou and Papadopoulos, 2002), or in the study of the dynamics of social exclusion (Poggi, 2007a and 2007b, Devicienti and Poggi, 2007). However, our understanding of other relevant aspects of social exclusion is still rather limited. This paper deals with one of these aspects that, to the best of our knowledge, has never captured the attention of economists and social scientists in general; namely, the transmission of deprivation among social exclusion dimensions.