Measuring economic lifespan inequality: a new indicator of poverty-free lifespan across Europe.

Poverty-Free Life Expectancy alone fails to capture disparities in the distribution of poverty-free years across individuals.

• Poverty-Free Life Expectancy measures only the average number of years individuals are expected to live above the poverty threshold.
• The indicator does not account for heterogeneity in economic well-being over the life course.
• The authors argue this gap motivates the need for a complementary distributional measure.

The paper formally introduces Poverty-Free Lifespan Inequality as a new indicator inspired by developments in Healthy Lifespan Inequality measurement.

• The indicator is conceptually analogous to Healthy Lifespan Inequality, extended to the economic domain.
• The paper provides a formal mathematical definition and elaborates its foundations.
• Policy relevance of the new indicator is explicitly discussed.

Poverty-Free Lifespan Inequality is computed using Sullivan-type methods combined with the Gini index applied to the distribution of exit from poverty-free life.

• Age-specific poverty prevalence data are used as inputs.
• Sullivan-type methods are used to derive the distribution of exit from poverty-free life.
• Inequality within that distribution is quantified using the Gini index.
• The approach is applied to European country-level data.

Poverty-Free Lifespan Inequality provides critical insights into the heterogeneity of economic well-being over the life course across European countries.

• The indicator reveals distributional differences that are not captured by average Poverty-Free Life Expectancy alone.
• Cross-country variation in inequality of poverty-free lifespan is demonstrated using the new measure.
• The authors conclude the indicator has direct policy relevance for monitoring economic inequalities in aging populations.