Combined use of Moran and Theil indices: an application on social and material vulnerability at territorial level

Abstract

The variability of the characteristics of the population and families at different territorial levels is an important key to interpreting social phenomena. This work deals with the social vulnerability of Italian municipalities. In the analyses we use the empirical indicators of vulnerability based on the 2011 census of the Italian population. This work goes beyond the traditional analyses that consider, one at a time, different levels of territorial aggregation: regional, provincial and municipal, leading them back to a global approach based on two phases. In the first phase we described how the patterns of vulnerability are confined to the provinces of the individual Italian regions, using jointly: the Theil index and its breakdown into variability explained by the province to quantify the effect of the provincial administrative boundaries on the investigated phenomenon and the Moran index to quantify the level of self-correlation of the investigated phenomenon in the region. This type of analysis made it possible to identify some regions, for example Campania and Puglia, where the phenomenon is concentrated only within some provinces of the region. In the second phase, attention was focused on the municipal level and using LISAs, we improved the understanding of spatial clusters of municipalities in the regions identified in the previous phase