More than 40% of Bulgarians living in overcrowded households – Eurostat
About 42.5 per cent of Bulgarians were living in overcrowded households in 2016, while just 10.5 per cent were in under-occupied dwellings, EU statistics agency Eurostat said on June 12.
This made the percentage of Bulgarians in overcrowded households the third-highest in the EU, after Romania and Latvia.
Eurostat said that across EU member states, almost half the population in Romania (48.4 per cent) were living in overcrowded households in 2016.
This was also the case for about two in every five people in Latvia (43.2 per cent), Bulgaria (42.5 per cent), Croatia (41.1 per cent), Poland (40.7 per cent), Hungary (40.4 per cent) and Slovakia (37.9 per cent), and for about one in four in Greece (28.7 per cent), Italy (27.8 per cent) and Lithuania (23.7 per cent).
At the opposite end of the scale, the lowest overcrowding rates were recorded in Cyprus (2.4 per cent), Malta (2.9 per cent), Ireland (3.2 per cent), Belgium (3.7 per cent), the Netherlands (four per cent) and Spain (5.4 per cent).
Overcrowding was also an issue for fewer than 10 per cent of the population in Finland (6.6 per cent), Germany (7.2 per cent), France (7.7 per cent), the United Kingdom (eight per cent), Luxembourg (8.1 per cent) and Denmark (8.2 per cent).
In the EU, 16.6 per cent of the population were living in overcrowded households in 2016, meaning they did not have the number of rooms appropriate to the size of the household.
On the other hand, more than one in three people (34.8 per cent) in the EU were living in under-occupied dwellings, meaning that the dwellings were deemed to be too large, in terms of excess rooms and more specifically bedrooms, for the needs of the occupant household.
In 2016, more than two-thirds of the population were living in under-occupied dwellings in Ireland (70.6 per cent), Cyprus (69.6 per cent), Malta (68.4 per cent) and Belgium (67.0 per cent).
Under-occupancy was also the case for around half the population in Spain (55.7 per cent), Luxembourg (54.1 per cent), the United Kingdom (51.5 per cent), the Netherlands (51.4 per cent) and Finland (48 per cent).
In contrast, fewer than 15 per cent of the population were living in dwellings deemed to be too large in Romania (6.3 per cent), Hungary (8.5 per cent), Latvia (9.6 per cent), Greece (10.2 per cent), Croatia (10.4 per cent), Bulgaria (10.5 per cent), Slovakia (11.4 per cent), Poland (14.2 per cent) and Italy (14.9 per cent), Eurostat said.
(Photo: Clive Leviev-Sawyer)
