In Luxembourg, more and more households are finding it difficult to make ends meet. Luxembourg’s national statistics bureau, Statec, who ran the study, found that some categories of people are doing better than others: here is the story in six figures.

22.4%

This is the proportion of households living in Luxembourg who have difficulty making ends meet. This figure is up compared to 2022, when only 20.7% of households reported being in this situation. More specifically, 16% of households say that making ends meet is “somewhat difficult” while another 4% call it “difficult” and 2% “very difficult.”

29%

Young people are the hardest hit by financial difficulties. Some 29% of people aged 16-25 have difficulty making ends meet, up from 25% in 2022. Older people seem to be less affected: among the over-65s, 9% of households say they are struggling to make ends meet. “There is therefore a clear difference between the generations,” says Statec. Within the rest of the population, about a quarter are struggling: 25% of people 26-40 and 24% of those aged 41-64.

42%

Beyond age, households of certain nationalities are more affected than others. Statec reports that, of the main nationalities present in the grand duchy, Portuguese people are most likely to be in financial hardship: 42% of them say they are having difficulty making ends meet. The steepest decline, however, is in French households: 24% of them are struggling, up from 18% in 2022.

33%

Perhaps unsurprisingly, tenants are faring worse than homeowners: 33% of renters reported being in difficulty, up one point from the previous year. Among the homeowners whose loans are still outstanding, 27% are struggling to make ends meet, up sharply from 21% one year earlier. Those who have paid off their loan, however, are--again unsurprisingly--in good shape: only 7% of them report difficulties, down from 10% in 2022.

37%

Another metric that Statec considered was the structure of the household: the hardest-hit are single-parent families, 37% of whom report difficulties (up from 30% in 2022), followed by couples with children (23%). Some 21% of single people report difficulties. And finally, those on the best foot tend to be couples without children, at 12% (no change since 2022).

83%

“More than half of households declared an increase in their income in 2023,” reports Statec, which is a major increase of 20 percentage points compared to 2022. The reason: the indexation of salaries, which 83% of households report having. This increase “has a favourable impact on how households feel about their level of income,” the report continues. “The gap between the (positive) perception of the level of income and the (negative) perception of the overall financial situation, specified as subjective poverty measured by the (self-declared) ability of the household to make ends meet, can probably be explained by the indexation mechanism, which enables the negative effects of inflation to be partially erased.”

This article in Paperjam. It has been translated and edited for Delano.