Multiscale Contextual Poverty in the Netherlands

Abstract

Contextual poverty is a multiscale phenomenon which affects socioeconomic outcomes of people as well as individual decisions to move in or out of the neighbourhood. Large-scale poverty reflects regional economic structures. Mesoscale concentrations of poverty within cities are related to city-specific social, economic and housing characteristics. Exposure to poverty at small spatial scales influences individuals through social mechanisms such as role models or social networks. At all these scales, poverty is a relative phenomenon, defined based on a certain local or national standard. Particularly smaller spatial scales of exposure to poverty are often neglected, largely due to the lack of data. Register data for the full population of the Netherlands, geocoded to 100m by 100m grid cells, makes it possible to consider a wide range of scales. However, altering scale yields different empirical results, as stated within the modifiable areal unit problem (MAUP). Our measure of contextual poverty, therefore, embraces a range of spatial scales of contexts and compares different places within and between cities, revealing different spatial patterns of multiscale poverty.