BRATISLAVA, October 7, (WEBNOVINY) — The number of people living at risk of poverty has been growing in Slovakia. More than a half of a million people are threatened by poverty. This stems from results of a statistics on incomes and living conditions EU SILC 2010, which the Statistics Office of the Slovak Republic presented on Friday. “Twelve percent of Slovaks citizens are at risk of poverty, which is more than 650,000 people,” the office’s chairperson Ludmila Benkovicova told a news conference. Compared with the results of EU SILC 2009, this is an increase by one percentage point, which accounts for approximately 100,000 people.
Poverty risk for one-member household represents income of EUR 306 a month. It is defined as sixty percent of the average income per household after deduction of payroll levies and other obligatory components, taking the household size into account. The median in 2010 was EUR 510 per person.
Economic activity of citizens has the biggest impact on the level of risk of poverty in Slovakia. The highest at-the-risk-of-poverty rate of 41.1 percent was in the case of unemployed people, while in other inactive people it was 16.5 percent. The portion of pensioners endangered by poverty was 6.7 percent, while in the case of employees it was 5.7 percent.
With regard to the type of households, households with three and more dependent children and one-parent households with one and more children face the highest risk of poverty.
When looking at at-risk-of-poverty rate by gender, women are more threatened than men. The rate in cases of men at risk of poverty reaches 11.7 percent, while in the case of women it is 12.2 percent. With regard to age, children under the age of 17 were at the highest risk of poverty.
Compared with other countries, Slovakia did very well. It belongs to countries with the lowest poverty rate in the world. The Czech Republic has the best results among EU countries, Iceland and Norway that participated in the survey. Bulgaria, Romania and Latvia are worst off, the statistical data show.
SITA
