Poverty
Spain is one of the European countries with the highest rate in the European Union
9.6 million poor Spaniards. That is the figure, with data from 2019, that the European Union offers on the economic situation of Spanish families. With these numbers, Spain climbs to the fifth place with the most poverty among community partners (20.7%), according to Eurostat. A rate that rises to 26.4%, according to the AROPE rate, in 2020. The latter measures the risk of poverty and / or social exclusion, a total of 12.5 million people. What is the actual figure? “It’s complicated”, responds Juan Carlos Llano, head of Research for the European Network to Fight Poverty and Social Exclusion in the Spanish State (EAPN-ES) and coordinator of the Report on the State of Poverty in Spain.
A complicated and complex calculation due to multiple factors and numerous formulas. At the end of the 90s, the United Nations (UN) developed the poverty index (HPI), which was updated in 2010 and adapted to the two main realities of the planet: the HPI 1 for developing countries. and HPI 2 for selected OECD countries. “It is not the same to be poor in Spain, as in Switzerland, as in Burundi (Africa),” Llano responds.
Currently Eurostat, the statistical office of the European Union, sets the poverty threshold at 60% of the median income distribution per unit of consumption. “Those who have a lower income than that line is poor and those who do not are not,” reveals Llano. However, “there are technical details that underestimate poverty,” he adds. “At Unicef we consider that the spending of a child in a home is undervalued”, denounces Gabriel González-Bueno, an expert on child poverty at UNICEF in Spain.
“At present there are technical details in the calculations that underestimate poverty”
JUAN CARLOS LLANO
Head of Research of the European Network to Fight Poverty and Social Exclusion in the Spanish State (EAPN-ES)
This formula arises from applying the concept of economies of scale to households, and “accepts the hypothesis that the joint expenditure of several people residing in the same household is lower than that which each would have separately”, explains the head of research of the EAPN-ES. For the European calculation, Europe uses the modified OECD equivalence scale, which assesses the first person in the household as 1 unit of consumption, the remaining adults (for this question, people aged 14 years or more are considered adults) with 0.5 consumption units each and the minors with 0.3 consumption units each.
For example, a household with two adults and two children has 2.1 equivalent consumption units. Thus, it is assumed that the second adult in a household consumes half that of the first and that a minor consumes slightly less than a third of what the first adult does. “That is not real, those of us who have had and have minors know that they do not consume a third than an adult, many times it is more”, adds Llano.
Real measurement?
In the XXI century, poverty is synonymous with an economic problem, although in reality it is “the inability to live with dignity,” Llano points out. “This is not reflected in the poverty rate,” he adds.
In search of a more realistic indicator, the UN builds its Human Poverty Index (HPI) on three pillars: a long and healthy life, knowledge, and a decent standard of living.
The main parameters are, on the one hand, the country’s probability of not exceeding 40 years of life (60 in OECD countries) and, on the other, the adult illiteracy rate; in developing countries. The third parameter refers to the unweighted average of the population without sustainable access to a treated water source and children who are underweight for their age.
However, in the OECD countries, the third pillar corresponds to the population below the poverty line, in addition, a fourth value is added: the long-term unemployment rate.
In 2020, 4.5 million people in Spain lived in severe poverty, almost 10% of the total population
The AROPE indicator of risk of poverty and / or social exclusion works in the same line, which includes a multidimensional vision of this concept in which the population that is at risk of poverty, with material deprivation or with low intensity in the job.
By its definition, being poor means not having the material, cultural and social resources necessary to satisfy basic needs and being excluded, therefore, from the minimally acceptable living conditions for the State or territory in which one lives.
Last 2020, 4.5 million people in Spain, representing 9.5% of the total population, lived in severe poverty. A number that establishes the Survey of Living Conditions of the National Institute of Statistics (INE). According to data from July of this year, the income threshold to consider that a household is in severe poverty is € 6,417.3 per unit of consumption per year; that is, each person must survive on less than € 281 per month in the case of a family with two adults and two minors, and with less than € 535 per month if they live alone.
«This survey only takes into account people who live in family dwellings and all those who live in residences, shelters or homeless are excluded, which has the consequence that many people in extreme poverty are left out of the sample and are not taken into account. account », rebate Llano.
With this budget, these people have to cover all their needs: housing, food, clothing, education of their sons and daughters, health, energy and leisure, among others.
[Esta información se enmarca en el
Objetivo de Desarrollo Sostenible (ODS) número 1].
Unicef: “We are slow in reducing poverty”
One of the targets of SDG 1 seeks to “reduce by at least half the proportion of men, women and boys and girls of all ages living in poverty in all its dimensions according to national definitions by 2030”. “We are going very slowly,” Gabriel González-Bueno, an expert on child poverty at UNICEF in Spain, told Antropía.
Child poverty in Spain reaches 27.4%, which is one of the highest rates, according to data collected by Unicef. “During the last decade the risk of child poverty has been greater than the risk of poverty of adults,” the organization’s reports say.
Figures that, for now, do not take into account the impact of Covid-19. “We know that it has had an impact and at street level that effect has been noticed, but the data do not yet reflect it,” González-Bueno reveals in a telephone conversation.
The NGO points out that, already in 2008, households with children suffered especially the effects of the economic crisis: families were heavily overburdened and not only child poverty grew, but also its chronicity and its correlation with material poverty. This was due, in his opinion, to the lack of a stable income guarantee network. “The impact was very permanent, because the reaction of public policies was very harsh, because the social protection of children fell by 30%,” he recalls. “The blow of Covid-19 has been strong, but there has been no withdrawal of social protection as in the previous crisis,” he says.
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