Statistical Correlation Between Tourism and Poverty in EU Countries

Abstract

Tourism is a crucial factor that contributes to a country’s economic growth. Nowadays, one of the greatest challenges worldwide is to diminish poverty since an increasing number of individuals suffer from this phenomenon. Throughout time, in many countries, tourism worked and still works as an economic development engine, contributing both directly and indirectly to the creation of working places in the economy. Tourism is one of the sectors of economic activity that can offer multiple opportunities to stimulate labour market growth with profound implications for the economic development level of countries that have a high level of poverty. Therefore, for some countries tourism represents the main source of foreign currency. If these revenues are directed towards poverty diminishing, the poorer categories can benefit from the inclusion of the local people in tourism activities, with positive effects on the attenuation of the current level of poverty. The aim of this research is to analyse the correlation between the activities from the tourism industry and the poverty level in the countries of the European Union. The employed research methodology relies on the correlation analysis, accomplished through the use of the data sets collected from the Web page of the European Commission related to the revenues obtained from tourism and the poverty level in the countries of the European Union. In order to highlight the differences existing between the EU member states, we will make a comparison using the cluster analysis. This paper aims to reveal that tourism cannot be regarded as the only factor for poverty diminishing but may have an extremely important contribution. Taking into account the size of the tourism industry in many countries of the European Union, we can state that a change of the approach regarding this industry’s importance for the economic development may have remarkable effects on diminishing the level of poverty.