THIRD OF SLOVAKS CANNOT AFFORD UNEXPECTED PAYMENTS

From Radio Slovakia International

Every fifth child in Slovakia lives in a family suffering from poverty, 4 out of 10 Slovaks cannot afford to pay for a week's holiday while one third of Slovaks is not able to face unexpected expenses. The EU statistics on income and living conditions results presented by the Statistics Office of the Slovak Republic also show that more than 16% of the Slovak population are in poverty. The most affected are the unemployed, lone-parent families and families with 2 adults and more than 3 children.

Ludmila Ivancikova from the Statistics office confirms that children from socially disadvantaged environment are at a high risk of poverty: "It can affect their education and employment which will be reflected again in their poor income." "The experience of long-term poverty affects a child's personality development," adds the Slovak Academy of Sciences researcher Zuzana Kusa. In Slovakia, the risk of poverty is set as a monthly income of less than EUR 373 while in the case of a 4 member family the threshold limit represents the sum of EUR 783.

Poverty is not, however, defined only by the size of the income but also by what can be afforded with the money earned by the employed person. The EU statistics shows that one third of the Slovak Republic's population is not able to finance unexpected expenses and every fourth Slovak cannot pay for a week-long holiday. Zuzana Kusa from the Slovak Academy of Sciences pinpoints a new phenomenon: "An increase of the number of households endangered by different arrears has also been observed."

The risk of poverty differs from region to region and this difference is significant. While in the Bratislava region, with the Slovak capital in its centre, only 4,5% of the population are living in destitution, in the Presov region with the highest rate of the Roma population, the risk of poverty applies to 19% of citizens.

Slovakia is one of the countries with the lowest rate of poverty and social exclusion in the EU. According to the latest results, Slovakia ranked third in the EU in 2017 following the Czech Republic and Finland. On the other side, the country with the highest number of people at risk of poverty in the EU is Bulgaria with almost 39% of its citizens living in destitution.
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Martina Šimkovičová, Photo: Flickr/Filter Collective