MOST citizens of Slovakia regard themselves as middle class, based on the socio-economic situation of their households. This was one of the findings from a survey conducted for the Finance Ministry by the Infostat Centre for Social Research.
Almost 75 percent of respondents placed themselves in the ‘average’ income group, most of them in the ‘weaker’ part of that group and as many as 25 percent of Slovaks ranked themselves as ‘poor’; only 2 percent of respondents described themselves as ‘rich’.
According to the results of the poll, 54 percent of Slovaks agree with the idea that people are poor due to wrong government policies and 27 percent say they believe that people get rich through good luck.
“The opinion that people are unemployed because they are lazy was shared by 19 percent of respondents,” the SITA newswire quoted Infostat as reporting.
As for savings, Slovak households vary greatly; 25 percent say they are able to save less than €50 per month, 20 percent save between €51 and €100, and one in eleven save between €101 and €150. More than 20 percent of the surveyed households said they do not save anything.
The survey involved 1,174 respondents contacted by the Infostat Centre for Social Research between March 10 and March 16 this year.
