Science1 publisher2 min readPublished
Bulgaria, Greece, Romania and Latvia trail an EU whose poverty rates fell from 2015 to 2023
Two Kosice economists find EU poverty fell between 2015 and 2023 on 10 UN goal measures, with the at-risk rate down from 17.4% to 16.2%. Large gaps between member states persisted, so the EU figure says little about how the countries at the bottom are doing.
The Scientist · Science desk
What happened
- In 2015 Spain, Lithuania, Latvia and Romania had poverty rates above 22%; by 2023 only Estonia and Latvia did.
- Romania improved most, with its at-risk-of-monetary-poverty rate falling from 25.4% to 21.1% between 2015 and 2023.
- The analysis split the data into 2015-2019, 2020 on its own because of the pandemic, and 2021-2023.
Compiled by The ScientistSomething wrong?How this is made
Why it matters
- decision The indicator a government leads with decides how much progress on SDG 1 it can report, since deprivation fell roughly four times faster than monetary poverty in relative terms.
- contradiction Estonia clears the 22% poverty line yet sits outside the vulnerable cluster, so a single poverty rate and the multidimensional grouping point policy at different countries.
- constraint Romania posted the biggest improvement and still landed in the bottom cluster, so ranking members by progress alone would miss where need stays highest.
The study's two EU-wide figures fell at very different speeds. The at-risk-of-monetary-poverty rate, measured after social transfers, dropped 1.2 percentage points, about 7% of its 2015 level [1]. Severe material and social deprivation dropped 2.9 points, close to 30% of where it started [2]. Both are among the 10 indicators the authors took from the UN's 2030 Agenda [2].
The countries above the 22% line changed. Three of the four above it in 2015 were below it by 2023 [8]. Estonia, which was not in the 2015 group, had moved above it [5]. Latvia is the only country above the line in both years and also in the most vulnerable cluster for 2021-2023 [7].
Romania's 4.3-point fall is about 17% of its 2015 rate [3]. At 21.1% it was still 4.9 points above the EU rate for 2023 [4]. The authors put it in the most vulnerable cluster with Bulgaria, Greece and Latvia [8].
Estonia goes the other way. It is above the 22% line but outside that four-country cluster [6], which comes out of the authors' multivariate analysis of member states [12]. "Poverty and social exclusion across EU countries cannot be understood through economic prosperity alone," the authors said [9]. They pointed to material deprivation, housing conditions and digital skills as the missing parts of the picture [9]. The findings, they said, show that "multidimensional poverty profiles evolve over time and do not necessarily follow traditional geographical divisions within Europe" [10].
The design choice I like best is the handling of 2020. The authors treat the pandemic year as a separate period, so it does not blur the comparison between 2015-2019 and 2021-2023 [3]. The thing this doesn't tell you is why any country moved. A cluster analysis groups countries by how alike their indicators look [12], and the published summary does not link the declines to any policy, transfer or wage trend. The phys.org write-up says the results show the need for policies "tailored to each country's needs" [11].
What to watch
- National figures after 2023 showing whether Estonia and Latvia fall back below 22%, or whether other members cross it.
- The full paper's results for the other eight measures, including housing cost overburden, and whether they reorder the country clusters.
- Any follow-up that ties Romania's 4.3-point decline to specific transfers or labour-market changes.