Prague, Nov 14 (CTK) – It is hard for 40 percent of Czech households to make ends meet every month and many people do not have enough money to buy new furniture, new clothes and shoes, dailies Pravo and Mlada fronta Dnes (MfD) wrote on Monday, referring to the latest Median agency’s opinion poll.
Unlike in most other EU countries, the threat of poverty is markedly higher for those Czechs who have children, Pravo quotes Median analyst Daniel Prokop as saying.
Two thirds of single mothers with one child and a half of complete families with at least three children are struggling to pay their monthly bills on time, Pravo writes.
Since the average salaries have been increasing and companies keep seeking new employees, the living standards in the Czech Republic are improving. However, this is not the case in all Czech regions, Pravo writes.
Prokop said nearly 7 percent of Czech households suffer from severe material deprivation. In northwestern Bohemia and the Moravia-Silesia Region it is 13.5 percent and about 12 percent, respectively.
According to the Czech Statistical Office, 5.6 percent of Czechs (approximately 590,000 people) suffer from severe material deprivation, MfD writes.
Severe material deprivation means that households cannot afford at least four items of the following list: own a telephone, a television set, a washing machine and a car, cover an unexpected payment under 10,000 crowns, go for a one-week holiday once a year, sufficient heating, eat meat once in two days, pay the rent regularly.
Prokop said poverty in Prague, which is a rich region, is underestimated.
Old people in Prague receive pensions whose level is standard, but their costs of living are higher than in the rest of the country, he said.
Prokop said poor citizens trust the democratic system less and tend to support an authoritarian rule more than others.
He said extreme poverty such as that from which people suffer in Africa almost cannot be seen in the Czech Republic, yet there is merely a thin line that divides many Czechs from misery.
“Extreme poverty when people have nothing to eat is minimal in the Czech Republic. However, many households are not far from it. The welfare system pulls thousands of families above the line of true poverty,” Prokop said, adding that several hundred crowns a month save a number of households from getting very poor.
MfD writes that more than one million people live below the poverty line in the country with a population of 10.5 million. The monthly gross income of these people is under 10,220 crowns. In the case of a family with two children the income is under 21,461 crowns a month.
Prokop said the Czech Republic ranks in the middle in terms of severe material deprivation among EU countries, however, such comparisons are relative because for example a poor Norwegian or Swiss person has an income two times higher than a poor Czech.
MfD writes that a majority of poor Czechs do not expect their financial situation to improve.
Poor people who have only a few thousand crowns in their bank account tend to apply disadvantageous strategies such as falling into debt, the paper writes.
People in a bad material situation tend to be more resigned and make worse decisions, Tomas Tozicka, from the Social Watch group, told MfD.
“These people make a series of bad decisions. The classical idea that people will be motivated by a decrease in their welfare benefits corresponds neither to our experience nor to the results of surveys,” Tozicka said.
He said the Czech state supports bad decisions by creating conditions for them, for example by letting firms give loans to people who make irresponsible decisions.
