The most recent data available (2012) show that 24,8% of the EU population, that is about 124,5 million people, are at risk of poverty or social exclusion. 16,9% of the population in the EU is at risk of relative income poverty, 9,9% is severely materially deprived, and 10,5% is living in households with very low work intensity.
The picture of poverty across the EU
The most recent data available (2012) show that 24,8% of the EU population, that is about 124,5 million people, are at risk of poverty or social exclusion. 16,9% of the population in the EU is at risk of relative income poverty, 9,9% is severely materially deprived, and 10,5% is living in households with very low work intensity.
However there is a wide difference between Member States: for instance, between 15% and 18,5% of the population are at risk of poverty or social exclusion in the Czech Republic, Luxembourg, Netherlands, Austria, Sweden, whereas 40% or over are at risk in Bulgaria and Romania.
Children (0-17) have a particularly high rate of poverty or social exclusion at 28%. One-parent households and those with dependent children have the highest poverty risk. For single parents with dependent children the risk of monetary relative poverty is 34,5%.
The risk is also particularly high among young people (18-24) at 23,1% .
Women are globally more at risk of relative monetary poverty with a rate of 17, 6%.
Of course, these figures do not include some of those in the most extreme situations such as some minority ethnic groups, especially the Roma, immigrants including undocumented migrants, the homeless, people living in or leaving institutions etc.
The crisis has reversed the decreasing trend in severe material deprivation (SMD) which rose markedly in several Member States between 2008 and 2012. The most notable rises were in Greece, Lithuania and Hungary (up around 8 percentage points), while Ireland, Estonia, Malta, Cyprus Latvia and Italy also experienced rises between 4,5 and 7 percentage points. Overall at the EU level, single-person households with dependent children are the most severely materially-deprived (21,3%) followed by single households (both male and female 12,2%) and households with two adults and three or more dependent children (11,8%).
In most, but not all, Member States where poverty affects a large share of the population, it also tends to be more severe. The depth or severity of poverty (i.e. how far below the at-risk-of-poverty threshold the income of people at risk of poverty is) for the EU as a whole in 2012 was 23,5 % : this means that half of those living under the poverty line were at least 23,5 % below the relevant at-risk of poverty threshold. The depth of poverty ranges from as low as 15 % in Finland to as high as 28,6% in Latvia and 30,9% in Romania. In Spain, this rate jumped from 24,4 % in 2008 to 31,4 % in 2012.
The depth of poverty has worsened in most countries during the crisis: among people facing monetary poverty, more people have dropped to the bottom of the income distribution ladder since the beginning of the crisis.
Unemployment is a key factor in people being at risk of poverty.
In 2012, 46,7 % of people who were unemployed were at risk of poverty. Severe material deprivation among unemployed people is also higher than within the whole population. In 2012, 12,5 million people in the EU suffered both severe material deprivation and were living in a household with very low work intensity.
Thus, while a job is a key route out of poverty, not all jobs pay enough to actually lift someone out of poverty. The working poor represent ⅓ of the working age adults at risk of poverty.
In 2012, 9,1% of the people in employment were living under the poverty threshold.In-work poverty significantly increased in ⅓ of EU countries between 2006 and 2011 (in Bulgaria, Denmark, France, Germany, Ireland, Malta, the Netherlands, Romania, Slovenia, and Spain). 19,1% of workers were in poverty in Romania in 2012, 12,3% in Spain and 15,1 % in Greece.
See At-risk-of-Poverty rates on Eurostat
Is the EU going to eradicate poverty?
The EU has set itself the objective to overcome poverty and make significant progress on the eradication of poverty since 2000. In 2010, the Heads of States and Governments committed themselves to reducing poverty and social exclusion by at least 20 million people. Is this going to happen?
The 2012 overall figure for the percentage of people-at-risk-of-monetary poverty (16,9%) is not very different from that from 2005 (16,4%) but in a context of decreasing household income this may hide increasing monetary poverty in reality. The AROPE indicator has not varied a lot since 2008 (23,7 %) but the crisis appears to have stopped the previous trend of slow continuous reduction.
It is very important to acknowledge that since the crisis the divergence between different parts of the EU is growing, with a new divide emerging between Southern and Eastern European countries where the social situation is deteriorating more severely than in Western and Northern countries. Countries with robust welfare systems have shown better resilience.
Austerity policies implemented although the EU have accelerated this social deterioration, through the limitations in wages and benefits and the cuts in services.
Whether poverty and social exclusion will be effectively combated over the next years will depend notably on the capacity of the EU and the Member States to acknowledge the negative impact of harsh austerity policy and to implement a balanced approach to crisis recovery likely to preserve human capital, human dignity and the European Social Model.
