Abstract

Poverty measurement in high-income countries predominantly relies on income-based indicators, often overlooking wealth as a key dimension of households' economic well-being. Yet wealth plays a crucial role in shaping consumption opportunities, intergenerational mobility, and financial resilience to unexpected shocks. Incorporating wealth into poverty measurement is therefore essential to provide a more comprehensive assessment of economic vulnerability. Despite the growing attention to wealth-related poverty, reliable estimates at the subnational level remain limited. The Household Finance and Consumption Survey (HFCS), the main harmonised source of information on household wealth in the euro area, is primarily designed to provide reliable estimates at the national level. Consequently, direct regional estimates may suffer from substantial sampling variability due to small sample sizes. However, understanding the geographical distribution of wealth-related poverty is crucial for identifying vulnerable areas and informing targeted policy interventions. This work aims to address this gap by producing reliable regional estimates of wealth poverty, liquid-asset poverty, and joint income–wealth poverty. Using data from the fourth wave of the HFCS, we apply Small Area Estimation (SAE) methods that integrate survey data with auxiliary information to improve the precision of regional estimates and provide a more detailed picture of spatial wealth disparities.