The National Statistics Office has today released the latest statistics released on income and living conditions.

The NSO data show that the average household gross income, with 2015 as income reference year, was estimated at €31,655, while the average disposable household income stood at €26,247, in 2015 the figures stood at €31,429 and €25,960 respectively

The 2016 European Statistics on Income and Living Conditions (EU-SILC) Survey results also show that the number of persons living in households with a national equivalised income below the at-risk-of-poverty line (€8,143), stood at 69,920.

The NSO said that this translates into an at-risk- of-poverty rate of 16.5 per cent. This rate is 0.2 percentage points higher than that recorded for the previous year.

Also for last year the survey shows that the severe material deprivation rate among persons living in households stood at 4.4 per cent. This is 3.7 percentage points less than the same rate estimated from EU-SILC 2015.

The three most influential variables that contributed towards this decrease, the NSO said, were: ability of households to spend one week’s annual holiday away from home; ability of households to keep their home adequately warm in winter; ability of households to afford a meal with meat, chicken, fish or vegetarian equivalent every second day.

The NSO remarked that at 20.1 per cent, the at-risk-of poverty or social exclusion (AROPE) indicator registered a decrease of 2.3 percentage points when compared to 2015 levels.

It explained that the AROPE indicator provides the share of persons who are either at-risk-of-poverty, severely materially deprived or residing in a house with low work intensity (applicable only for persons aged 0-59).

According to the survey results, the share of persons at-risk-of-poverty or social exclusion went down for those living both in households without dependent children and with dependent children.

The survey showed that the AROPE rate for these two household types stood at 19.6 per cent and 20.5 per cent respectively.

The NSO said that households without dependent children registered a decrease of 1.3 percentage points and households with dependent children a decrease of 3.4 percentage points compared to the AROPE rate estimated from EU-SILC 2015.

Photograph by Alain Salvary

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