Last year, almost 900.000 Slovaks were below the poverty line, according to government statistics. That was an increase of almost 6 per cent on the year before, and represents roughly one-fifth of the total population.
The deterioration was widely attributed to the pandemic, and to inflation which made food substantially more expensive and thus out of reach for the lowest incomes. The worst situation in Slovakia is in the Prešov region, in the east, where a quarter of the population is poor.
In the European Union, a person is considered poor with income below 440 euro a month. In Slovakia, the threshold is lower: a person is only poor if his income falls below 269 euros a month, the minimum subsistence level according to the Statistical Office.
Food prices rose almost 30 per cent, and energy prices have also skyrocketed, said economist Martin Halas.
Slovakia divides poverty into three dimensions - the first is income poverty.
“This refers to the amount of money people have to spend per month,” explains Jana Morhacova, the spokesperson of the Statistical Office.
The second dimension is called deprivation, based on a survey. The Office asks, for example, whether people can afford a meat meal twice a week, whether they can pay for a one week-long holiday. If at least seven of these criteria apply, the person is considered as suffering from poverty.
“The third dimension of poverty is the so-called low intensity of work; these people worked for very short periods during the year, i.e. did not have a job for most of the year.”
The hardest hit are single-parent families, of which there are 360.000 in Slovakia.
“Of these, almost half fall under the poverty line,” adds Eva Markova from the 1parent NGO.
Source: RTVS
