Regional poverty and income inequality in Türkiye

Throughout human history, individuals have made various efforts to meet their basic needs and eliminate their deficiencies; this process has facilitated the construction of today's modern social structure. In this context, ensuring justice in income distribution and reducing poverty have been among the primary objectives. Increasing national income and establishing social peace, prosperity, stability, and justice have been pursued as means to achieve these goals. However, from a sociological perspective, income distribution inequalities are observed to have detrimental effects on societies. The lack of adequate explanations regarding the causes of poverty makes it difficult to develop effective policy responses. Nevertheless, access to social security, healthcare, and education services should be recognized as fundamental rights necessary for individuals to sustain their livelihoods.Inflation and economic crises experienced by countries adversely affect not only income distribution but also employment levels and the overall economic structure. Therefore, it is expected that governments will develop effective policies and take necessary precautions during periods of crisis to minimize potential damages. If equal opportunities are ensured, the elimination of poverty becomes a more realistic prospect. However, participation in productive activities and contribution to society are often constrained by income inequality, which in turn exacerbates poverty. In this study, the relationship between income inequality and poverty is analyzed using a panel dataset covering 26 regions in Turkey for the period 2014–2022. A Poverty Index was constructed using the Principal Component Analysis (PCA) method and modeled with variables including income inequality, consumer inflation, trade openness, illiteracy rate, and net migration rate. The empirical analysis employed a fixed effects model, and the Driscoll-Kraay robust standard errors method was applied to address issues of cross-sectional dependence, autocorrelation, and heteroscedasticity. The findings reveal that income inequality and consumer inflation have a statistically significant positive effect on poverty. In contrast, trade openness, illiteracy rate, and net migration rate were found to have a mitigating effect on poverty. The model's coefficient of determination (65.9%) indicates a strong explanatory power of the selected variables in accounting for variations in poverty.