Fewer Poles living in poverty

10th February 2012

The number of poor in Poland has fallen by eight million since the country joined the European Union, new figures reveal.

Statistics from EuroStat, the EU’s number-crunching unit, show that there are now five million Poles living in poverty in comparison to the 13 million when Poland joined the union back in 2004.

Among the nine factors determining what makes somebody poor are not enough money to pay the rent and electricity bills, and not possessing a washing machine or colour television. To classify as poor, a person has to meet four of the nine criteria.

In total that means about 14 percent of the country is mired in poverty, which still makes for sorry reading in comparison to the 4.8 percent in the UK, 1.3 in Sweden and even the 6.2 percent in fellow former communist state the Czech Republic.

But Poland looks good when compared to the 21.6 percent of Hungarians living in poverty and 31 percent of Romanians.

Doctor Bohdan Wyznikiewicz, from the Institute of Market Economics, attributes the fall to a number of factors. Unemployment has fallen since accession from 18 percent to 10 while at the same time the minimum wage has increased from PLN 849 a month in 2005 to PLN 1,500.

EU membership, he says, has also chipped away at poverty, especially in rural communities which have profited from the influx of cash from the common agricultural policy. In total the farming backwaters of the country have benefited to the tune of PLN 8 billion in EU funds.

But every silver lining has a cloud.

“Don’t forget that some two million people left the country to work abroad and this influenced the statistics,” Professor Hanna Palska, a sociologist from Collegium Civitas, told Gazeta Wyborcza. “Also Poles are ashamed of being poor and do not want to admit to the interviewers that they are living in poverty. My research shows that typically they say they are in an average condition when in fact they are actually poor.”

She also stressed that the EuroStat figures show that some five million Poles, living on monthly incomes of not more PLN 688 per family member, are classified as “at risk of poverty”. And while the minimum wage may have increased, many people have part time contracts or no contracts at all and as a consequence earn less than the legally stipulated minimum.

Despite the clear fact that many millions of Poles still live in poverty despite the economic progress of the past 20 years, the news that their numbers are decreasing will be welcomed, especially given the difficult economic circumstances experienced in Europe over the past three years.