ACCORDING to the World Bank, Slovakia has dramatic and increasing differences in the living standards of its regions, the daily SME wrote.
The statistics say that people in the Bratislava region pay an average Sk731 (€18.3) a month for culture and relaxation, more than double the Sk327 (€8.19) spent on average in the Prešov region in eastern Slovakia.
As for average expenditures on food, the difference is not great, which goes against the widely held assumption that the rest of the country is generally cheaper than Bratislava. In the Bratislava region the average monthly expenditures for food per one household member was Sk1,972 (€49.37) against an average salary of Sk18,877 (€472.6), while in the Prešov region people spent Sk1,388 (€34.75) with an average salary of Sk11,385 (€285.03).
Poverty impacts the quality of life in the low-earning regions and pushes educated people to move to towns. The World Bank warned that the concentration of people with a university education was two or three times higher in Slovak towns than in the countryside.
