Last Year 895,000 Slovaks Threatened by Poverty, Down by 85,000 Y-o-Y

Bratislava, 9 May (TASR) - Last year, 16.7 percent of the Slovak population was threatened by poverty or social exclusion, which is over 895,000 people, with the figure going down by almost 85,000 year-on-year (y-o-y), according to the results of a European statistical survey on incomes and the living standards of households in 2025, the so-called EU SILC, published by the Slovak Statistics Office earlier this week. In 2024, the share of people at risk of income poverty, or those who were severely materially and socially deprived, or living in households with very low work intensity, amounted to as much as 18.3 percent. In Slovakia, one in six people faced one or more dimensions of poverty in 2025. However, after four years of growth, both the share and the number of people at risk of poverty or social exclusion declined y-o-y, with the situation improving in six of the eight regions of Slovakia. Nevertheless, an unfavourable trend was observed among multi-child families and single-parent households. In terms of poverty incidence, households with children are significantly more at risk than childless ones. The worst situation was observed in single-parent households in which one adult lived with one or more children. As many as 50 percent (32,000) of people living in this type of household faced poverty, which was the highest level ever. Of the three dimensions of poverty or social exclusion, the highest number of people in Slovakia are at risk of so-called income poverty. In 2025, the national threshold for a single-person household was €7,794 per year, i.e. €650 per month. In 2025, 12.2 percent of the population of Slovakia, or almost 652,000 people, lived below the income poverty line, down by almost 127,000 people y-o-y. ko/df