Better than Bulgaria and Romania, but worse than the rest of the European Union; this is how Greece ranks in terms of poverty affecting the country’s citizens.
According to 2016 data issued on Monday by the European Union’s statistic service, 3.8 million people in Greece are living in conditions of poverty and social exclusion (accounting for 35.5 per cent of the Greek population, or one in three Greeks).
By contrast, the EU average is 23.4 per cent, or one in four people. In 2008, before the Global Financial Crisis hit Europe, the respective numbers were 28.1 per cent for Greece and 23.7 for the EU average.
The best-faring countries are Denmark, Finland, and the Czech Republic with respectively 16.7 per cent, 16.6 per cent and 13.3 per cent of the population living in poverty. Greece is at the lower end of the spectrum, followed by Romania (38.8 per cent) and Bulgaria (40.4 per cent).
The definition of poverty, according to Eurostat, is that of a person earning less than 60 per cent of the average national income, and being unable to afford basic goods or fulfil basic financial obligations.