How Poverty Becomes Persistent
Disadvantages in housing, employment, childcare and education reinforce one another. An effective anti-poverty strategy must address how temporary shocks become lasting insecurity. A keynote speech by Irene Tinagli
This keynote address was delivered at “Anti-Poverty Strategy: Policies for an Effective Implementation”, a conference organised by IEP Bocconi and the European Commission’s Directorate-General for Employment, Social Affairs and Inclusion (DG EMPL) in Milan on 9 October 2026.
Poverty is one of the most pressing challenges of all time, so I am really happy that the European Commission and Bocconi University are joining forces to keep this debate and discussion going.
Usually, when we talk about poverty, we begin by talking about the outcomes: insufficient income, material deprivation, exclusion from essential goods, numbers and statistics about these outcomes.
But I knew that these numbers would be mentioned and illustrated, even better than I could ever do, by Mario and by those who spoke before me.
So I will not start from there.
I think the real question we have to ask, and the one I want to address in my speech, is another one: how do we get there? How does it happen? How is disadvantage produced, how does it accumulate over time, and why do some temporary shocks become persistent differences in people’s opportunities and economic security?
This is the question we need to ask, because poverty is rarely the result of a single event. It is more often the outcome of several constraints that interact over time.
Just to give an example, a temporary loss of employment can become more persistent when a household has limited savings, high housing costs or insufficient access to childcare. A period outside the labour market can affect future earnings and pension entitlements.
Poor housing can affect health, educational outcomes and the ability to access employment (try to go to a job interview when you don’t even have a shower and clean clothes).
Limited access to early education can affect both children’s development and their parents’ ability to participate in the labour market. Each of these things interacts with the others, sometimes reinforcing the effects of an initial disadvantage.
The important point here is that economic disadvantage can become cumulative, and this is the problem. Once disadvantages accumulate, they can affect not only the present income of a household, but its future capacity to participate, to accumulate further assets and to protect itself against risks. This requires us to look at distribution in a much broader way.
Distribution is shaped well before social transfers enter the picture: by differences in access to education, employment and services, and by the institutions governing labour markets and wage formation.
All these factors influence primary incomes and the opportunities to accumulate human and financial capital. So they need to be included in any reasoning on fighting poverty – along, of course, with the necessary traditional tools of social protection and redistribution.
IEP Bocconi does not express opinions of its own. The opinions expressed in this publication are those of the authors. Any errors or omissions are the responsibility of the authors.
