Proposal Description

Persistent inequalities in income, living conditions, access to services, health, education, employment, and housing continue to affect many vulnerable population groups worldwide. At the same time, recent economic shocks, demographic shifts, migration trends, population ageing, and rising living costs have increased the demand for more detailed and timely evidence on the situations faced by different socio-economic groups.

Official statistical systems face major challenges in producing reliable and internationally comparable statistics on vulnerable populations that can provide empirical evidence for policies designed to ensure that no one is left behind. Many groups are often difficult to measure accurately in traditional data collection frameworks because of small sample sizes, missing or incomplete sampling frames, undercoverage, nonresponse, informal economic activity, or rapidly changing social circumstances. In parallel, users increasingly demand more granular indicators to capture cumulative disadvantages affecting vulnerable groups across multiple dimensions, including region, household structures, labour market status, ethnic or migrant background, disability status, and other aspects of vulnerability.

This session examines recent methodological and practical advances in measuring inequalities affecting vulnerable groups. Contributions may address topics such as poverty and social exclusion measurement, multidimensional inequality indicators, disaggregated statistics, integration of survey and administrative data, data quality and comparability, and the use of innovative data sources and statistical techniques to improve social measurement.

The session seeks to encourage dialogue between official statisticians, researchers, policymakers, and international organisations on how statistical systems can more effectively capture the complexity of social inequalities while ensuring methodological robustness, transparency, and international comparability.