Disability and Social Exclusion Dynamics in Italian Households

This paper investigates the dynamics of social exclusion comparing Italian households with and without disabled people, adopting the EU definition of social exclusion and the social model approach to the disability. The analysis applies a dynamic probit model accounting for true state dependence, unobserved heterogeneity and endogenous initial conditions to the 2004-2007 IT-SILC data. Our findings indicate that the incidence of social exclusion for households with disable people is about double with respect to other households, and this disadvantage is especially due to exclusion in the work intensity and material deprivation dimensions. This suggests that analysis based just on income perspective could be insufficient to provide a proper picture of reality. Second, households with disabled people are more likely to persist in social exclusion than other households. Third, persistence in social exclusion for households with disabled people is more likely to be explained by unobserved (and observed) heterogeneity, than by true state dependence. Fourth, households with disabled members experience a stronger severity of social exclusion, explained more in terms of structural factors than in terms of state dependence. Our findings suggest that households with disabled people could benefit more than other households from long-term policies aimed at removing structural factors determining a social exclusion history. The severity of social exclusion, that is stronger for households with disabled members, conforms to the same pattern.