Poverty Greece - 600,000 citizens facing food insecurity in 2021

It is essentially a record compiled by the Hellenic Network for the Fight against Poverty, where it presents quantitative and qualitative statistics, trends in poverty, measures needed for its reduction and also focuses on recording and utilizing the experience of member organizations and other social organizations.

This year 24 organisations from across the spectrum of civil society participated in the survey presented by the Greek Network's managers (7 June to 15 July 2022 based on a questionnaire) along with data focusing on the social crisis and inequality resulting from both the COVID-19 pandemic and the conflicts in Europe's neighbourhood.

As Panagiota Arvanitis, President of the Hellenic Network, stressed, “fighting poverty is a political choice”, noting that through the records and conclusions it seems that things are getting worse. She focused on the digital divide, which is now a key parameter of poverty issues, as well as access to health services.

The President of the Hellenic Network listed the three principles where there is convergence at European level in the formulation of policies to tackle poverty.

As he said:

Policy must be designed on the basis of everyone's needs.

Digitisation should not be the only way of communicating with services, e.g. for the elderly and homeless, and should be an option rather than an obligation.

A decent income and wages for all that covers inflation should be guaranteed. “We should not forget that a decent living is a right of all people,” Ms Arvaniti said.

The situation is getting worse

Spyros Psychas, member of the Board of Directors of the Hellenic Network for the Fight against Poverty, noted that the recent study presented in July by ELSTAT on household incomes is an assessment but does not fully cover the reality.

“For example, a percentage of the very poor are not recorded. Also, if those living in collective housing, e.g., camps, nursing homes, institutions, etc. are recorded, then the actual poverty rates will be affected.” He noted that based on the Commission, the number of poor people in Europe is estimated at 90 million this year. “But this year it is not clear what is happening”, Psyhas said, referring to the inflationary situation.

“There is an increase in the poverty rate,” Psyhas said, stressing that “when we have a statistical confirmation then we can understand that things are getting worse. With the increase in the statistical record, it basically shows an overall deterioration, A big one also is the issue of living in low labour-intensive households e.g. part-time work. There are also many households deprived of basic goods, not being properly fed, not having access to the internet, not having a second pair of shoes, not having money for an emergency visit to a doctor.”.

Focusing on nutrition issues, he noted that according to ELSTAT, more than 600,000 Greeks have a food problem, while 156,000 Greeks are hungry, i.e., they do not eat for a day a week or have not eaten even though they are hungry.

He also noted that 3,090,000 people are on the verge of poverty, stressing that the whole issue is not a matter of general interest but of urgent intervention. At the same time he pointed out in 32% is the risk of income poverty among children who in fact “experience more poverty than adults.”

“Hidden poverty”

For her part, Manto Baboula, the Network's Communication Officer, said that “the data we included in the report cannot capture all the dimensions of poverty nor what happens to all vulnerable groups and the poorer general population. After all, social reality is always different from numbers and statistics. The report can therefore only provide an indicative picture by shedding light on aspects of poverty. Only a persistent and sensitive look at how people around us live and feel can guide us in understanding what is really going on.”

It is important to mention that the poverty risk rate before social transfers (i.e. without counting pensions and all kinds of benefits in the total income) reaches 48.2%!” said Ms Baboula, adding that: “Without pensions the poverty risk would be 23.5% higher and without benefits 5.1% higher. With this data we understand that benefits and pensions reduce the risk of poverty by 28.6% and therefore play a key role in prevention.”

As Ms. Mamboula pointed out, “an additional indicator concerning the income status of those living below the poverty line is the poverty risk gap or depth of poverty risk. This is calculated as the difference between the poverty line for the whole population and the median equivalent disposable income of the poor population as a percentage of the poverty line. That is, it is an indication of how much lower the incomes of those living below the poverty line are. For 2021, the poverty risk gap-weight was 26.4% of the poverty risk threshold. Based on this it is estimated that 50% of the poor have an income of less than 73.1% of the threshold (i.e. €5,251), i.e. less than €3,838 per person per year.”

At the same time, the Network's communication officer stressed that “according to ELSTAT's statement, population groups that are presumed to be poor (such as homeless people, illegal immigrants, Roma who change their place of residence and other mobile populations - who do not have a stable shelter) are under-represented in the survey.”

He added that “poverty rates started to increase dramatically after 2010 reflecting the conditions of the evolving economic crisis: relative poverty (three indicators) was 27.7% in 2010, 31% in 2011, 34.6% in 2012, 35.7% in 2013 and reached 36% in 2014. This was followed by a slight decrease, reaching 35.7% in 2015, 35.6% in 2016, 34.8% in 2017, 31.8% in 2018, 30.0% in 2019 and 28.9% in 2020.

However, it is striking that in the whole of the past twelve years, about a third of the total population survived in conditions of poverty or exclusion according to official data. This suggests that poverty has been a persistent problem for a large part of the population and that it only started to decline in the years 2017-2019. For 2020 itself, when we had a large drop in incomes due to the pandemic, official data show that relative poverty is starting to rise again.

Note that at the European Union level, Greece is consistently the second country after Bulgaria with the highest rates of population at risk of poverty or social exclusion in all years from 2015 to 2021 (just as with material deprivation).”

The children

And based on the Report, the poverty risk (by income criteria only) for children aged 0-17 years (usually called «child poverty») is 23.7%. This sensitive area has seen an increase of 2.3 points since 2020 (21.4%) while child poverty had already increased by 0.3 points since 2019. It is no coincidence that 7.5% of children live in a low-employment (hence low-income) household compared to 13.6% of adults.

The conclusion is that almost one in four children of age live in a household at risk of poverty and one in three at risk of poverty or social exclusion. These figures show that child poverty in Greece is severe, recurrent and worsening and that we are in a much worse position than the European average, where one in five children live in poverty.

It is worth noting that based on the Network's Report, until the summer of 2022, the Greek government had not submitted to the European Commission the National Action Plan, which each member-state had to prepare and submit in order to tackle child poverty and strengthen the rights of children - especially those belonging to vulnerable groups. Based on Council Recommendation (EU) 2021/1004.