The persistent risk of poverty

The measure conventionally used in the EU to identify those people who are at risk of poverty is if, in a particular year, they have disposable income that is below 60% of the median in the country concerned. It thus picks up both those whose income is consistently below this level (or at least in most years) and those who have experienced a temporary drop because, for example, they (or someone else in the household) were out of work for part of the year, because they worked short hours or because the sales of their business fell for a time. From a policy perspective, it is the former group that is the main cause for concern. The indicator devised to measure persistent poverty is designed to distinguish this group from those people whose income has fallen below the poverty threshold temporarily.

The persistent risk of poverty is defined, in the set of indicators used in the EU to monitor social inclusion, as 'having an equivalised disposable income below the at-risk-of-poverty threshold in the current year and in at least two of the preceding three years', where 'current' in practice means the last year for which income data are available and the 'at-risk-of poverty threshold' is usually taken, as indicated above, as 60% of the national median.

Longitudinal data from the EU-SILC for 2009 enable persistent poverty to be estimated for most EU Member States over the four-year income period from 2005 to 2008. For each of these years, data were collected from the same panel of respondents, who together make up 25% of the people sampled each year. However, because of survey problems, longitudinal data are not available for three of the 27 EU Member States - Germany, Ireland and Romania.