A new sur­vey con­ducted by Sta­tis­tics Esto­nia shows that 19 per­cent of Estonia’s pop­u­la­tion lives in rel­a­tive poverty. The coun­try in Europe’s Baltic region is one of the top ten poor­est coun­tries in Europe.

From Baltic busi­ness News, writer Marge Tubalkain-Trell details the survey.

In 2007, a per­son was con­sid­ered to be at-risk-of-poverty if his/her monthly equalised dis­pos­able income was below 4,340 kroons. The at-risk-of-poverty thresh­old rose by 860 kroons com­pared to 2006. The share of per­sons liv­ing in rel­a­tive poverty did not change sig­nif­i­cantly com­pared to the pre­vi­ous year, but the dif­fer­ence in income between the poor­est and rich­est fifth of the pop­u­la­tion decreased by 0.5 per­cent­age points. The dif­fer­ence in income between the poor­est and rich­est fifth of the pop­u­la­tion was five­fold. In Europe the income dis­tri­b­u­tion was more unequal than in Esto­nia in Latvia, Lithua­nia, Poland, United King­dom, Por­tu­gal and Greece. The inequal­ity level was sim­i­lar to Estonia’s in Italy, Spain and Ger­many.

In 2007, incomes grew for the entire pop­u­la­tion. Incomes increased most in the small­est and medium income quin­tiles — in the first, sec­ond and third — by about a quar­ter. In the fifth income quin­tile that com­prises of richer peo­ple income increased by 13%. The dis­tri­b­u­tion of income in soci­ety remained at about the same level as in pre­vi­ous years — there was no sig­nif­i­cant mobil­ity between the quin­tiles irre­spec­tive of occu­pa­tion, age and gen­der. The rich­est house­holds in Esto­nia are house­holds with­out chil­dren where all mem­bers are work­ing (their at-risk-of-poverty rate is 4%) and the poor­est are house­holds with chil­dren where nobody works. In the lat­ter the at-risk-of-poverty rate increased by three per­cent­age points dur­ing the year and rose to 87% in 2007.

Due to the decrease in the dif­fer­ences of incomes, income inequal­ity slightly less­ened between Esto­ni­ans and non-Estonians and the urban and rural pop­u­la­tion. Eth­nic Eston­ian cit­i­zens’ income increased on aver­age 17% over the year, while the income of non-Estonians with other or unspec­i­fied cit­i­zen­ship grew by about a fourth. Sim­i­larly, the income of the urban pop­u­la­tion grew by 17% and that of the rural pop­u­la­tion by about a fourth.

In North­ern Esto­nia the con­cen­tra­tion of richer peo­ple among the over­all pop­u­la­tion was the high­est — 55% of North­ern Esto­ni­ans belonged to the fourth or fifth income quin­tiles. In Northeastern Esto­nia (Ida-Viru county) most peo­ple were poor — nearly 60% of peo­ple belonged to the first or sec­ond income quin­tiles. Cen­tral, West­ern and South­ern Esto­ni­ans had a com­par­a­tively even income dis­tri­b­u­tion. The ratio of rich and poor peo­ple tends to be more equal in the cities, in the coun­try­side the poor are a larger majority.

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