Published in Scientific Papers. Series "Management, Economic Engineering in Agriculture and rural development", Vol. 21 ISSUE 1
Written by Simona-Roxana ULMAN

Although the financial hardship and material deprivation tended to register decreasing levels among Europeans in the last period, there are still some population segments that did not register the same amelioration trend. In this regard, the rural area is still commonly disadvantaged comparatively to the urban one. Particularizing, in Romania, the poverty indicators show a critical situation and also considerable disparity between rural and urban levels of poverty is recorded. Taking into consideration this national context, using data from Eurostat and GCI, registered in the period 2009-2017, path analysis is applied in order to identify the direct and indirect effects of some of the main socio-economic factors on Romanian severe material deprivation. Our empirical findings highlight that the explanatory variables regarding (1) citizens’ particularities in terms of education, employment and gender and (2) characteristics of national economic environment such as government efficiency, government expenditure on social protection and economic growth registered significant and different types of effects on rural and urban Romanian poverty. The fact that the direct and indirect causal relationships were different in terms of rural and urban spaces indicates that the poverty policies should concentrate on the distinction between rural and urban specificities and try to particularly answer to each of them. In this way, our study intends to respond to a real need for research in this field, being also possible to represent a support for the policies addressing poverty in the Romanian context.

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