Prague, Feb 10 (CTK) – Almost 15 percent of the Czechs who are aged over 65 and live alone, who are mostly women, are threatened with poverty, according to a survey released by the Czech Statistical Office (CSU).
People with less than 60 percent of the monthly median income, which was 9,900 crowns in 2014, when the study was completed by the Research Institute for Labour and Social Affairs, fall in the poverty category.
There are 1.6 million pensioner households in the 10.5-million Czech Republic.
In their younger senior age, most pensioners live with a partner, but in a higher age most of them live alone.
About half a million elderly people live alone. Almost 80 percent of them are women, the study says.
According to the CSU, poverty threatened almost 15 percent of households of the people over 65 who live alone, which was about 75,000 people in 2014.
A total of 2.4 million Czechs receive the old-age pension. Out of them, 10 percent received a monthly pension lower than 8,352 crowns.
In addition to their old-age pension, a widow and widower’s pension was received by 500,000 women and 89,000 men, respectively, the CSU said.
Elderly people’s incomes mainly consist of their pensions paid out from the public pay-as-you-go pension system.
In 2014, women’s monthly average pension was 10,000 crowns and men’s 12,200 crowns.
“Nine in ten poor Czechs over 65 are women. The Czech Republic is one of the EU’s members with the highest share of women among the seniors living in poverty,” the study said.
The women’s risk of poverty is almost double compared with men.
The pensioners with only elementary education face a three-times higher risk of poverty than university graduates.
According to the study, poverty threatens people in their pre-retirement age as well, the risk being very high before the age of 60.
“People’s conditions at the moment of retirement and the strategies they choose are crucial [for whether they will face the threat of poverty]. Poverty at old age is a problem that can be prevented by early and targeted steps,” the authors of the study wrote.
They said the system of additional private pension-saving schemes plays a marginal role in fighting old-age poverty, because people save only a low sum this way. Moreover, the schemes are mainly joined by those with a high salary, whose old-age pension would be high enough anyway, the authors wrote.
They recommended that the state should take steps to make the old-age pension-saving schemes more effective.
