(16 October 2015) – In 2014, 122 million people, or 24.4% of the population, in the European Union were at risk of poverty or social exclusion.
This means that they were in at least one of the following three conditions: at-risk-of-poverty after social transfers (income poverty), severely materially deprived or living in households with very low work intensity.
In 2014, more than a third of the population was at risk of poverty or social exclusion in three Member States: Romania (40.2%), Bulgaria (40.1%) and Greece (36.0%). At the opposite end of the scale, the lowest shares of persons being at risk of poverty or social exclusion were recorded in the Czech Republic (14.8%), Sweden (16.9%), the Netherlands (17.1%), Finland (17.3%) and Denmark (17.8%).
More than 1 in 5 persons was at risk of income poverty in Romania (25.4%), Spain (22.2%), Greece (22.1%), Bulgaria (21.8%) and Latvia (21.2%).
The share of those severely materially deprived in 2014 varied significantly among Member States, ranging from more than 20% of the total population in Bulgaria (33.1%), Romania (26.3%), Hungary (23.9%) and Greece (21.5%), to 5% or less in Sweden (0.7%), Finland (2.8%), Denmark and the Netherlands (both 3.2%), Austria (4.0%), France (4.8%) and Germany (5.0%).
In 2014, Greece (17.2%), Spain (17.1%) and Belgium (14.6%) had the highest proportions of those living in very low work intensity households.