site.btaBulgaria Records Highest Share of People at Risk of Poverty in EU in 2024

The share of the population at risk of poverty in Bulgaria in 2024 was 21.7%, show Eurostat data published on Monday. This share was once again the highest in the European Union, after Bulgaria ranked fourth in 2023, behind Estonia, Latvia and Romania.

Compared to 2023, the indicator – which reflects the proportion of Bulgarians whose income is below 60% of the national median disposable income after social transfers – has increased by 1.1 percentage points.

Latvia (21.6%) and Lithuania (21.5%) recorded the second- and third-highest shares of people at risk of poverty in the EU in 2024.

The lowest shares were reported in Czechia (9.5%), Belgium (11.4%) and Denmark (11.4%).

Overall, 16.2% of people in the EU (72.1 million) were at risk of poverty in 2024. This is exactly the same share as in 2023.

Eurostat also measures the risk of poverty by planning regions, which in Bulgaria are the South-West, South-Central, South-East, North-East, North-Central and North-West regions.

According to the 2024 data, the region with the highest risk of poverty is the South-Central region, which includes the Kardzhali, Pazardzhik, Plovdiv, Smolyan and Haskovo Regions. There, the indicator shows that 28.8% of the population was at risk of poverty. For eight consecutive years until now, the North-West region – which includes the Vidin, Vratsa, Lovech, Montana and Pleven Regions – had the highest risk of poverty.

The South-West planning region, which includes Blagoevgrad, Kyustendil, Pernik, Sofia Region and Sofia City, again had the lowest risk of poverty in Bulgaria at 13.8%.

In 2024, however, for a second consecutive year, none of Bulgaria’s planning regions ranked among the top 10 in the EU with the highest poverty risk.

According to this classification, the poorest region was French Guyane, where more than half (53.3%) of the population was at risk of poverty. The situation was only slightly better in Spain's Ciudad de Melilla (41.4%) and in Calabria (37.2%) in Italy.

The Romanian region of Bucharest-Ilfov had the lowest risk of poverty (3.7%), followed by Belgium’s East Flanders region (5.4%) and Italy’s Autonomous Province of Bolzano/Bozen (5.9%).