Working Papers
Working Papers
Is Chronicity Growing? Exploring Intertemporal Poverty in the EU over Three Decades, with Olga Cantó
EQUALITAS Working Paper nº98, June 2026
Exploiting harmonised longitudinal income data over the period 1994–2023, this paper examines intertemporal poverty in Spain in the past three decades. To ensure that any single set of normative assumptions does not drive results, we rely on three methodologically distinct approaches that differ in their assumptions about income substitutability across periods. We document two main findings. First, while the share of individuals experiencing at least one poverty spell has declined since the mid-1990s, all indicators point to a substantial rise in the incidence and severity of chronic poverty, concentrated around the Great Recession and sustained thereafter. Second, an Oaxaca-Blinder decomposition reveals that the observed decline in poverty exposure is largely a compositional effect, driven by improvements in individuals’ observable characteristics. Once these are held constant, both the probability of ever experiencing a poverty spell and the risk of chronic poverty have consistently increased since the mid-1990s, highlighting a structural weakening of the returns that observable characteristics have to prevent short and long-term deprivation.
Work in Progress
Rich Enough? Disentangling the Role of Wealth in Measuring Intertemporal Poverty
School Calendar, Human Capital, and Parental Employment: Causal Evidence from Admin Data, with Lucía Cobreros, Claudia Hupkau and Jenifer Ruíz-Valenzuela
Precautionary Savings and Wealth Depletion, with Dmitry Petrov and Marina Romaguera-de-la-Cruz
Policy Work