Poverty is reduced again in Spain, after the increase recorded last year due to the inflation crisis. The population with income below the poverty threshold The great recession. There is a general improvement of several indicators of precariousness and inequality, but with two black points: the problems to pay housing and child poverty.
These are some of the conclusions of the Living Conditions Survey (ECV) published annually by the INE and that offer official data on poverty and inequality in Spain. In a rich country, poverty is measured relatively, compared to the standard of living of society.
Relative poverty (19.7%) affects people who live with income below 60% of the country’s median income and, on the other hand, the risk of poverty and social exclusion (AROPE) It also measures the low intensity in employment and the so -called “severe material and social lack”, which deprive citizens of basic goods. The poverty and exclusion rate was also reduced last year, up to 25.8%, a fact that is still elevated with respect to the crises chained by pandemic and inflation.
“The data in general are positive. There are some elements to keep in mind. In the last 20 years when a crisis arrived, poverty rose with intensity and, when the recovery came, it stopped rising, but stabilized at the high levels of the crisis. This has broken. Poverty rose during the crisis by COVID, the war in Ukraine and inflation, but less. It did not go up much and also now we are below that data with a general character, ”explains Carlos Suías, president of EAPN-ES, the NGO network specialized in the fight against poverty.
The income inequality indicators have also decreased, placing themselves in the minimum of the statistical series, which starts in 2008.
Carlos Susias places the novelty in the management of the last crises as a turning point, with the increase in the minimum wage, the labor reform that reduced temporary employment and the launch of aid such as the minimum vital income. “The measures taken are diametrically different from the past. The so -called “social shield” has had a protective effect on the population, an impulse of the economy and has acted as a poverty reducer. ” The EAPN estimated that the ERTE and other measures of the social shield prevented 1.5 million people from falling into poverty.
Inequality has been reduced thanks to a large increase in the income of the poorest 10% of the population. Their income collapsed more than those of the rest of the company with the last financial crisis, generating a gap for a decade that has been closed in recent years, as illustrated by the following graph.
The severe material lack, which in recent years had left very worrying historical data of energy poverty and problems to buy meat or fish, are finally reduced in 2024. In addition to the moderation of prices, wages have increased more and some Revenue that affect the most vulnerable people, such as the minimum wage, have registered important increases above prices.
However, there is a specially relevant dissonant note: housing. The fact that has had delays in the payment of expenses related to the main housing in the last year is maintained.
The “Hole” rental
Despite the reduction of poverty and inequality that the survey shows, a detailed analysis shows the effects of some transversal crises, which cross large population segments. “One of the most surprising things is that there are some factors, such as living for rent, which not only affect the lower classes, but are beginning to impact the socks,” explains the head of Social Protection and Employment Policy of Oxfam Intermon, Alejandro García-Gil. A clear example is the delays in the payment of expenses related to housing, such as rent or mortgage, gas, water or community. For the first time in the entire historical series, the rate of people living for rent at market price who cannot assume payments per day is greater than those of those who have a lower income, mainly protected or social.
“People who live in a market rental are giving resignations that are not doing those who live in public or social rental, nor those who have a property in property, which continue to follow the big gap” explains García-Gil. These resignations have to do with the consumption of a meat, chicken or fish meal at least every two days or with the ability to keep the home at an adequate temperature. In the first case, people for market rental are those who have experienced mild improvements, of only two tenths, compared to seven of the total.
The other focus on material lack is the ability to maintain housing at an adequate temperature: energy poverty. It has dropped into all housing tenure regimes, with an average of 3.6%. Although the falls have been more accentuated in both types of rent, these are more than 10 points above. In the case of protected income, it has dropped from 34.5% of households to 29.2%. For free rentals, households that are cold in winter have been reduced from 31.9 to 27.3%.
“For people who live for rent below the market price energy poverty has been reduced 5.3 points and, among those who live at market price, 4.6. It is striking that those who, a priori, enter less improve their situation more than the rest in something like electricity, which fluctuates the same for everyone, ”says García-Gil. In this line, measures such as the Electric Social Bonus for vulnerable families have been implemented, but other voices see similarities with effects caused by the great recession. “Energy poverty affects people who have a salary and better conditions, but who cannot keep their home at adequate temperatures,” warns the head of the UGT branch, Rubén Ranz.
The reading of the experts consulted concludes that the increase in housing prices, especially for rent, is a brake for poverty eradication. “Everything we are trying to improve conditions, such as the SMI or the salary increases of collective agreements, goes in many cases for rent, the true hole that generates the greatest poverty,” Ranz develops, which attributes the “disproportionate increases ”To the lack of price control due to the refusal of regional governments, mainly those of the PP, to declare tension areas.
This price control is also defended by the president of EAPN. “You have to do something immediately so that housing can be accessible to people,” says Susiah, which points to another negative element, such as “housing maintenance expenses.” Sociologist Sánchez-Sierra remembers in this regard that household expenses are cumulative. You can do without the holidays, to go to a restaurant or the second pair of shoes, but not to pay the rent or the mortgage. “Once you find the difficulty of facing an expense with the house, it accumulates month by month, it is recurring,” he says.
The rising exception: child poverty
The general reduction of poverty was clouded by an exception, the increase in child poverty, which already occurred last year. “Boys and girls remain the great losers in a context of economic growth. Its entrance or monetary poverty rate has increased from 28.9 to 29.2%, ”they regret in UNICEF. “Spain is the fourth economy in La Unión Europa and also occupies the unfortunate position of being the second country with more child poverty,” says Catalina Perazzo, director of childhood policies at Save The Children.
In Cáritas they emphasize that you cannot “separate childhood and first youth from the home context.” “That child poverty is being given in a full family,” recalls Marina Sánchez-Sierra, sociologist of the Spanish Cáritas Studies team.
This worsening among minors is also related to the housing crisis. “It is having a role of impoverishment and determining social exclusion for children and their families,” they indicate in UNICEF, with worse indicators in delays in the payment of housing in households with children in charge. In Cáritas they agree that housing explains part of “the generational gap” in the poverty they are observing, since the elderly “are not subject to swings of employment and, in general, do not have so much problem with housing,” he adds Sánchez-Sierra.
In the EAPN, UNICEF and Save The Children demand that specific measures on childhood be implemented, such as universal benefit by parenting. This is one of the commitments of the coalition government, which is promoting Sumar and the Ministry of Social Rights with a view to the next budgets. In addition to transversal policies, social organizations point out the need to focus investment in children and families, “to approach European average.” “We talk about that, models and amounts that already exist in other countries,” says Marina Sánchez-Sierra.
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