Poverty in Europe (graphs)
Eurostat has published new data on poverty in Europe. Five graphs from this report which, alas, does not include recent data.
(The abbreviations of the countries: Belgium (BE), Bulgaria (BG), the Czech Republic (CZ), Denmark (DK), Germany (DE), Estonia (EE), Ireland (IE), Greece (EL), Spain (ES), France (FR), Italy (IT), Cyprus (CY), Latvia (LV), Lithuania (LT), Luxembourg (LU), Hungary (HU), Malta (MT), the Netherlands (NL), Austria (AT), Poland (PL), Portugal (PT), Romania (RO), Slovenia (SI), Slovakia (SK), Finland (FI), Sweden (SE) and the United Kingdom (UK))
1. Poverty is a choice – but not an individual one. Poverty is high in some low and medium income countries – but it’s lowest in the medium income Czech Republic. The percentage increased in Latvia, hit very hard by the crisis. Surprisingly, it declined in Ireland (up to 2009!).
Graph 1. People at risk of poverty after social transfers, 2005-2009
2. Severely materially deprived people experience, according to Eurostat, “at least 4 out of the 9 following deprivation items: cannot afford 1) to pay rent/mortgage or utility bills on time, 2) to keep home adequately warm, 3) to face unexpected expenses, 4) to eat meat, fish or a protein equivalent every second day, 5) a one week holiday away from home, 6) a car, 7) a washing machine, 8) a colour TV, or 9) a telephone (including mobile phone).” Even despite the crisis their number declined: the stock of household capital clearly increased and improved. That’s good news.
Graph 2. Severely materially deprived people, 2005-2009
3. More Germans and Irish than Greek and Spaniards lived in households ‘with very low work intensity’, i.e. “those aged 0-59 who live in households where on average the adults (aged 18-59) worked less than 20% of their total work potential during the past year. Students are excluded”. ..
Graph 3. People living in households with very low work intensity, 2005-2009
4. Long term unemployment (> 12 months) went up in many countries, but there were quite notable exceptions (Italy! Bulgaria! Poland!). Note, however, that the graph does not include 2011.
Graph 4. Long term unemployment, 2005-2010
5. Spain, Italy, Greece, the UK and Portugal do not only have a grave economic problem. Billions will have to be spend as fast as possible (i.e. starting today) to educate the ‘early leavers’. Many transition countries do quite well.
Graph 5. Early leavers from education and training.
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