Negative poverty record for Greece
- Written by E.Tsiliopoulos
According to ELSTAT, the national statistics agency, the percentage of Greeks living below the poverty line (meaning with incomes less than 60% of the average national disposable income) came to 34.6%, or 3,795,100 people.
This percentage has been climbing since the first memorandum in 2010 (27.6% in 2010, 27.7% in 2011, 31% in 2012 and 34.6% in 2013).
Worse than Greece are Bulgaria (49.3%), Romania (41.7%) and Latvia (36.2%).
As concerns EU countries under memorandum packages: Ireland (30%), Spain (28.2%), Cyprus (27.1%) and Portugal (25.3%).
The five countries with the lowest poverty levels, in the EU, are Netherlands (15%), Czech Republic (15.4%), Sweden (15.6%), Finland (17.2%) and Luxemburg (18.4%). The average for the EU stood at 24.8% and 23.3% in the Eurozone.
