Eurostat: Close to 40% of Bulgarians have difficulty making ends meet
Close to 40 per cent of people in Bulgaria had great difficulty, or difficulty, in making ends meet, European Union statistics agency Eurostat said on November 28, citing polling done in the second quarter of 2022.
This was the highest in the 10 EU countries surveyed, with Finland at the other end of the scale, with 11 per cent of the population saying that they had great difficulty or difficulty in making ends meet.
Apart from Bulgaria and Finland, the other EU countries participating in the survey were Belgium, Ireland, France, Italy, Luxembourg, Austria, Slovenia and Slovakia.
Data show that more than one in five people had great difficulties or difficulties making ends meet in Bulgaria, Slovakia, Italy and France, Eurostat said.
In the second quarter of 2022, most people in EU countries participating in the quarterly data collection on living conditions reported increasing difficulties in making ends meet, compared with previous quarters, reflecting the increase in prices since the beginning of 2022.
This information comes from data on the impact of Covid-19 on living conditions and it is the result of a newly designed data collection with the participation of 11 member states, Eurostat said. While 11 countries participated in the first round of the survey, the results of which were released in June, 10 took part in the second, with Luxembourg not included because it does not collect data on ability to make ends meet.
Eurostat said that in the second quarter of 2022, the share of the population that could make ends meet easily or very easily ranged from 3.6 per cent in Bulgaria to 40.5 per cent in Finland.
The share decreased in comparison to the previous quarter in all the nine countries for which data are available, except for Italy (+0.3 percentage points (pp)).
The highest decrease in the share of the population that could make ends meet easily or very easily in the second quarter of 2022 compared with the previous quarter was registered in Slovenia (-4.4 pp) and Austria (-4.0 pp).
However, the share of the population able to make ends meet with great difficulty or with difficulty increased over quarters, Eurostat said.
In the second quarter of 2022, this share increased in comparison with the first quarter of 2022 in all participating countries, except for Slovenia and Finland, where it decreased by 0.1 pp and 0.5 pp, respectively.
In the same quarter, the highest increases in this share were registered in France (+5.6 pp) and Austria (+2.7 pp), Eurostat said.
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