Empirics
Poverty in Europe
To illustrate the problem of poverty, see the Figure 4 below. It is shown that in some countries
such as Bulgaria and Romania, almost half of the people are at risk of
poverty. Here the risk of poverty is assumed to appear if persons` income represents
less than 60% of median income. Under this assumption there are at least 10 % of people
in all European countries at this position. Therefore, this is not only a problem in very poor countries, although in some African countries, for instance, this problem is obviously more severe.
Figure 4. People at risk of poverty
Source: Eurostat, 2012c