The Subjective Well-Being of Those Vulnerable to Poverty in Switzerland

The only research to our best knowledge is the one conducted by Tillman et al. (2016), in which the relationship between the subjective well-being and a precarious situation (characterized by either income or material deprivation) is analyzed. Our study is different from theirs because we are using a longitudinal perspective in the construction of the vulnerability to poverty index which is dynamic. Our approach is more focused as we consider vulnerability as a process.

In the medical field, vulnerability is synonym to frailty (or social frailty), meaning a cumulative process of negative events. In fact, this particular process represents what constitutes a vulnerable person (Thomas 2008). In geography, the concept of vulnerability is strongly linked to the notion of risk (ecological, disasters, hazards) and it is recognized that risk is exacerbated by the world globalization (Bresson et al. 2013; Bankoff et al. 2004). Vulnerable groups tend to live in places where disasters or hazards are more prone to happen [due to their assets (capital or human)] and therefore to suffer greater loss. The notion of hazard is essential in environmental sciences, to which disasters are associated. Despite great technological advancement, it is still difficult to prevent or predict an event with absolute certainty (Cardona 2003). Vulnerability of individuals is seen as the propensity to welfare loss due to risk from natural hazards (Dwyer et al. 2004; Cardona 2003; Bankoff et al. 2004). Vulnerability is seen, in this particular domain, as an on-going and forward-looking process. In sociology, the concept of vulnerability was well studied by Castel (1999). He distances himself from the notion of risk while studying the concept of vulnerability. Indeed, Castel refused to reduce individuals to risk factors only, thinking that it is more important to identify a sphere of collective existence according to the society’s integration (Martin 2013). Vulnerability corresponds to two zones of fragility: (1) fragility of the integration in the labour society, (2) fragility of the insertion in socio-family and community sociability (Martin 2013). The living conditions are marked by uncertainty about the future. Therefore, an individual is considered as vulnerable if he is not integrated in those two spheres. In the economic sciences, scholars have become more aware of the need to study and analyse the concept of vulnerability since the publication of the World Development Report (WDR) 2000/1. Indeed, this report highlights the relationship and interconnection between poverty, risk, security, and empowerment (Alwang et al. 2001). According to Alwang et al. vulnerability refers to “(…) the relationship between poverty, risk and efforts to manage risk.” (2001, 1). Since then, the World Bank has developed a new domain of research, the social risk management (SRM), to analyse and protect vulnerable groups to welfare losses (they are concerned with the vulnerability to economic poverty).

See Table 7 in “Appendix” for sample size by year.

For further details on the methodology presented here, see López-Calva and Ortiz-Juarez (2014).

This threshold, which is absolute, corresponds to 2600 Sfrs per month for one person in 2015. To apply this threshold to the entire household, we multiply this amount of money by the OECD equivalised scale (1 for the first adult, 0.5 for other adult and 0.3 for children).

We decided to split the sample into four categories in order to match, more or less, the literature (with thresholds used either by national institutions or by the scientific community). Thus, we have the poor, the vulnerable, the middle class and the secured groups. As we had to mix absolute thresholds (vulnerability to poverty and poverty measures) and relative thresholds (for the middle class and the secured group 70–150%), we found that the absolute thresholds were very close to the relative ones: for poverty at 60% of the equivalised median household income: 2600.- for the absolute and 2664.09 for the relative. For the lower middle class or upper vulnerable threshold (70%): we found an amount of 3121.5 Sfrs for the measure of vulnerability to poverty and 3108.11 while using the relative approach.

Table 9 in Annex lists all the variables used in the analysis with the number of observations for each sub-category.

We used the same absolute thresholds as for 2015 for the period 2011–2015. Only the relative threshold that distinguished between those secured and the middle class, which is the 150% of the equivalised median household income, has been adapted for each year.