2024-05-11 04:52:53
Every tenth worker is poor. This is shown by the analysis of the latest data of the National Statistical Institute, made by the Institute for Market Economy (IPI) and commented to BNR by economist Adrian Nikolov.
Poverty in our country is slightly decreasing in 2023, and income inequality is shrinking. Both findings are a consequence of the increase in pensions, on the one hand, and employment, on the other. However, improvements are slow, and political chaos promises to delay for years the fundamental change of the social system, which has real potential to accelerate positive trends.
In 2023, the total poverty line for the country is BGN 637.92 per household person per month. With this size of the line, there were 1.3259 million people below the poverty line, or 20.6% of the country’s population.
The contraction is about 1.5 points per year, which has not happened recently.
“The changes are very dynamic. It is better to wait at least another 1-2 years. Then we will know in fact whether it is a permanent reduction of poverty or, on the contrary, it is a temporary correction and we will return to the previous trend of a slight increase,” noted Nikolov.
According to him, in the last few years, the right approach has been applied in our country, with the linking of social benefits to the poverty line and the introduction of income criteria and more precise targeting of welfare support.
Despite the slight contraction, inequality in Bulgaria remains far from European targets.
Unemployment remains a leading factor in poverty. The share of the poor among persons over 18 years of age is 57%, while among working people – 11%. In a year, there is a significant drop of 14 percentage points of poor pensioners.
Unemployment is the reason for 67% of the poor among people with primary and lower education, with primary education – 33% are poor, among those with higher education – 3.2%.
The structure of the respective household also matters for falling into the poor.
“If we have a family with two workers, even with a minimum wage, they have to have 4 or more children to enter the poor group. Completing secondary school manages to get many, many people out of this group”, the economist emphasized.
In a regional breakdown of the data, a difference of up to 2:1 in average wages can be observed.