As many as 700,000 Slovaks (13 percent of the population) were living in or on the verge of poverty in 2011, according to an EU-SILC (Statistics on Income and Living Conditions) survey carried out by the Slovak Statistics Office (ŠÚ) that was released Tuesday, Ocotber 2. The numbers of people affected increased by one percentage point year-on-year, representing an increase by 50,000 people in real figures.
"The risk [of poverty] is thrice as high with the unemployed as with the economically active population," director of the ŠÚ's social statistics and demography department Ľudmila Ivančíková told the TASR newswire, adding that the risk for the unemployed reaches 43 percent.
Head of the department of statistics on living standards Robert Vlačuha points out that poverty rose among the economically active, too. "The poverty risk rate with pensioners and economically active people was at the same level of 6.3 percent," said Vlačuha.
When it comes to specific groups of people, it is households with at least three children, single parents, children and youths under 17 years of age and women who are at the highest risk of experiencing poverty. According to EU-SILC 2011, the limit for assessing the risk of poverty was set at the income of €315 a month for a one-member household. The limit rose by 3 percent (€10 a month) year-on-year. The EU-SILC limit is calculated according to the median equivalised household disposable income, which reached €525 a month last year.
(Source: TASR)
Compiled by Zuzana Vilikovská from press reports
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