Multiple deprivation in Croatia

Commissioned by: The World Bank
Project duration: July 26, 2016 – March 31, 2018
Project manager: Danijel Nestić, PhD
Collaborators: Željka Kordej-De Villa, PhD, Ivana Rašić Bakarić, PhD


Brief outline:
As the Consultant, the Institute of Economics, Zagreb supported the World Bank team in the development of a detailed geo-referenced database that provided information about the geographic distribution of social exclusion using a range of indicators of well-being, multiple deprivation, as well as the distribution of social services and infrastructure, which could help inform policies to reduce poverty and social exclusion.

Results of the project were support to the World Bank team on the production of the Croatian Index of Multiple Deprivation and support to the World Bank team on the design and implementation of surveys on social service in five pilot locations.

There were two major strands of activities. The first strand was development of the Index of Multiple Deprivations (IMD) for small areas. The index was based on available socioeconomic indicators from a variety of sources at the level of municipality/town (level 2 of local administration units (LAU2) in Croatia). The IMD work included the definition of the Index, its domains, sub-domains and indicators. The IMD was designed as a complement to the information on monetary poverty from the poverty mapping exercise. The second strand aimed to understand the access to and quality of various social services in different areas of Croatia. The services considered included social services (health, education, employment, social welfare, etc.) and infrastructure services as well (roads, telecommunications, electricity, heating, cultural facilities, sports and recreation, etc.). The information from this component came from a survey in five pilot areas that informed about the presence or absence of these services in a given community and the degree of user satisfaction with the services that were present.

Methodology: After reviewing the relevant EU countries’ experience in designing the Multiple Deprivation Index, the team developed the Croatian Index by considering stakeholders needs (key stakeholder was the Ministry of Regional Development and EU Funds) and by applying the most appropriate methods. In the first stage, the potential indicators were identified. Selection of indicators was partially based on their correlation with poverty at LAU2. The selected indicators were aggregated into a single index by considering various methods of grouping, weighting and standardization by applying various methods, among others statistical methods (principal components, factor analysis) and counting approach (censored deprivations).