Prague, Aug 19 (CTK) – The Czech Republic has the lowest number of extremely poor people out of all countries of the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), but despite that one in ten Czechs suffers from financial problems, daily Lidove noviny (LN) writes yesterday.
According to the OECD standings, 5.3 percent of inhabitants of the Czech Republic have ended up under the income poverty level, which means they do not reach a half of the median income in the country, while in Denmark it is 5.4 percent, in Norway 8.1 percent, in Germany 8.4 percent and in Britain 10.5 percent, LN writes.
“The OECD does not measure the real state of poverty, but inequalities among the poorer half of inhabitants,” Daniel Prokop, from the Median agency, said.
The poverty income level, which is the sum needed for subsistence, is 9901 crowns for an individual and 12,872 crowns for a parent living with a child under 13, according to the Czech Statistical Office (CSU).
However, experts point out that the OECD method is not sufficiently precise to assess the poverty level.
“The medium income in Western countries is twice higher than in the Czech Republic if the price differences are taken into consideration,” Prokop said.
Consequently, if there are many households with a high income in the country, even those with a standard income may be considered poor by this method, he added.
Three years ago, a study based on a median income in the whole EU was released. It showed that 24 percent of Europeans, including some 30 percent of Czechs, suffer from income poverty.
The Eurostat EU statistical office also released a map of the regions threatened with poverty and social deprivation. In the Czech Republic, those were the Karlovy Vary and Moravia Silesia regions, LN writes.
Statisticians say there is a better method assessing poverty in the population – the material deprivation indicator, developed by the European Commission.
It is based on nine items in the areas of housing, consumer goods and holiday that a household can afford, Jiri Vecernik, from the Sociological Institute of the Science Academy (AV), told LN, adding that they include a one-week holiday for all household members and a possibility to eat meat every other day.
Those who cannot afford at least four of the items suffer from material deprivation. It afflicts 6.7 percent of people in the Czech Republic, while the EU average is about 9 percent, according to the latest data, LN writes.
The CSU has estimated that 10 percent of the population were threatened with poverty in the Czech Republic in 2014, compared with 8.6 percent a year before.
The most threated group are incomplete families. One-fifth of them would not have finances for four of the nine items, LN says.
This is why the Labour and Social Affairs Ministry’s expert commission for family policy is preparing an overall change in support for families. It is to focus mainly on child-care services, such as children’s groups as an alternative to nurseries, to help parents harmonise their work with family life, LN writes.
($1=24.427 crowns)
