Poverty and social exclusion in the Italian regions: an attempt of measurement through a simple index

Social exclusion is a very complex concept, which includes monetary poverty, but doesn’t exhaust its manifestations in it. In the present paper, we’ve tried to propose a synthetic index for the measurement of this phenomenon, which takes into account the three dimensions of discomfort individualized: economic, social and human. The methods are those used by UN to designe HDI, and the application to the Italian regions has allowed us to point out the clear contrast between high exclusion regions (southern), and low exclusion regions (northern and central). The regional ISE values have been compared with the regional GDP per capita values, showing the clear opposition between the two groups of regions. The results achieved have been also compared with those obtained with other applications.