The data collated by the State Statistics Office (RZS) show that every fifth person in Serbia, or over 1.3 million people, was at risk of poverty last year.
RZS’s newest data show that the poverty risk rate in Serbia was 20 percent in 2022.
As RZS explains, the poverty risk rate represents the percentage of persons whose disposable income is lower than the poverty risk threshold, which in 2022 was 26,509 (around EUR 220) dinars on average per month, for a one-person household.
This rate, it is added, does not show how many people are really poor, but how many of them have an income below the poverty threshold. This means that the potential number of poor people in Serbia is significantly higher.
These data also show that persons aged 65 and over were most exposed to poverty, namely 22.6 percent, followed by persons aged 55 to 64 (21.6 percent).
President of the Nezavisnost Trade Unions, Čedanka Andrić, says that there is still an unacceptably large number of people in Serbia at risk of poverty.
“The fact that 20 percent of citizens have incomes up to 26,509 dinars per month speaks best about the standard of living of a significant number of the population,” she points out.
Her words are confirmed by the data of RZS, according to which the risk of poverty in 2018 was 24.3 percent, in 2019 it was 23.2, in 2020 it was 21.7 percent and in 2021 it was 21.2 percent.
(Danas, 18.10.2023)
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