Almost a quarter of Albanians are at risk of falling into poverty, according to data released by INSTAT.

The percentage of people at risk of poverty in 2019 was 23.0%, a decrease of 0.4% when compared with 2018 and 0.7% when compared with 2017. The survey was conducted only for the year 2019 and INSTAT has no data from 2020 at present.

The survey looked at the size of household disposable income, how many members are living in each household, and income distribution amongst the population. It found that around 659,000 people were living below the at-risk-of-poverty threshold in 2019.

Concerningly, 37.1% of the population experience severe material deprivation. This means they are deprived of at least four out of nine items used by the European Commission’s Social Protection Committee to calculate material deprivation. These include being unable to pay rent or bills, keep the home adequately warm, meet an unexpected expense, eat meat or protein regularly, go on holidays, buy a television, have a washing machine, buy and use a car, or afford a telephone.

While this number had decreased slightly in 2018, it remains high in comparison to the rest of Europe.

Furthermore, almost half (46%) are living in a household with very low work intensity. This metric refers to the number of months that all household members have been employed during the last 12 months when considering how many could have been working. The very low threshold is considered to be 20%, Albania scored just 12.4%.

INSTAT refers to the Gini Coefficient and Income Quintile Ratio to qualify Albanian’s income distribution. Under the Gini Coefficient, 0% represents a population with perfectly fair income distribution, while 100% means perfect inequality. Albania scored 34.3%.

In Europe, Montenegro reached the highest at-risk-of-poverty percentage (24.5%) followed by Romania (23.8), Serbia (23.2%), and then Albania. The lowest poverty rates are found in the Czech Republic (10.1%), Finland (11.6%), Slovakia (11.9%), and Slovenia (12.02%.) The EU Member States average is 16.8%, a 6.2 percentage difference with Albania’s 23%.