Households in potential economic distress. A geographically weighted regression model for Italy, 2001-2011

The potential economic distress of households is a phenomenon bound up with a very broad set of economic, demographic and social factors. This paper is concerned with the identification of these factors and of how their spatial variability influences the spatial variability of the Share of Households in Potential Economic Distress (SHED). To this end, a model of geographically weighted regression (GWR) is calculated for the SHED observed in the 110 Italian provinces at the time of the last two censuses (2001 and 2011). The results show that the SHED and its determinants present a sharply defined geographical pattern that varies over the ten-year interval.