Romania, Second Among EU Members Regarding Risk of Poverty or Social Exclusion
In 2024, 93.3 million people in the EU (21.0% of the population) were at risk of poverty or social exclusion, which means they lived in households experiencing at least 1 of 3 poverty and social exclusion risks: risk of poverty, severe material and social deprivation, and living in a household with very low work intensity. Compared with 2023, there was a slight decrease of 0.3 percentage points (21.3% of the population, 94.6 million people).
The shares of people at risk of poverty or social exclusion varied across the EU countries in 2024. The highest values were reported in Bulgaria (30.3%), Romania (27.9%), Greece (26.9%), Spain and Lithuania (both 25.8%). On the other hand, the lowest shares were recorded in Czechia (11.3%), Slovenia (14.4%), the Netherlands (15.4%), Poland (16.0%) and Ireland (16.7%).
This should raise concerns among decision making factors, because the relative new welfare acquired is very unevenly distributed and this is bad news for social cohesion, as it can be seen in recent elections. If we take into account the millions of Romanians that already left the country, situation could of been worse than the figures recorded for residents.
The risk of poverty or social exclusion (AROPE) is not dependent strictly on a household's composition and level of income, as it may also reflect joblessness, low work intensity, working status, or a range of other socio-economic characteristics. To calculate the number or share of people who are at risk of poverty or social exclusion 3 separate measures are combined and this covers those people who are in at least one of these 3 situations
-people who are at risk of poverty, in other words, with an equivalised disposable income that is below the at-risk-of-poverty threshold
-people who suffer from severe material and social deprivation, in other words, those who cannot afford at least 7 out of 13 deprivation items (6 related to the individual and seven related to the household) that are considered by most people to be desirable or even necessary to lead an adequate quality of life
-people (aged less than 65 years) living in a household with very low work intensity, in other words, those living in households where adults worked for 20% or less of their total combined work-time potential during the previous twelve months.
More than one-fifth (21.9%) of people living in households with dependent children in the EU were at risk of poverty or social exclusion which was slightly higher than the respective share among households without dependent children (20.1%). Nevertheless, these rates varied considerably across the EU countries.
For people living in households with dependent children, the rate ranged from peaks of 30.8% in Bulgaria, 30.4% in Romania and 30.2% in Spain down to 13.0% in the Netherlands, 12.7% in Cyprus and 9.8% in Slovenia. For those living in households without dependent children, the rates varied from 32.3% in Latvia, 29.9% in Estonia and 29.8% in Bulgaria to 15.4% in Slovakia, 13.8% in Luxembourg and 9.1% in Czechia.
As one can see, Romania follows the French, Spanish and Greek pattern of significantly increasing the risk of poverty when having to raise children (not the case for Bulgaria), opposed to the situation encountered in all Baltic states, Finland and Denmark. The simple explanation is that the first cluster of countries favours the elderly and the latter is concentrating the social protection resources to youth.
In this context, there are two main directions for improving the situation. First, reducing poverty by redesigning the taxation system in favour of disadvantaged categories in general. Second, moving the accent put on social protection from old age benefits to achieve a balanced approach relative to raising kids, in order to offer better chances of development for them.
Photo source: PxHere.com.
