Luxembourg ranks close to the EU average when it comes to being at risk of poverty or social exclusion. Photo: Shutterstock

Luxembourg ranks close to the EU average when it comes to being at risk of poverty or social exclusion.  Photo: Shutterstock

A Eurostat study has found that, in 2020, 96.5 million people in the EU were at risk of poverty or social exclusion. In other words, around one in five Europeans.

Social exclusion, , means being “materially and socially deprived or living in a household with a very low work intensity.” People who qualified for both at-risk categories were only counted once.

With a rate of 19.9%, Luxembourg ranks slightly below the EU average of 21.9%. The rate in the grand duchy has slowly risen since 2015, when it was 18.4%.

Most EU countries had percentages between 15% and 25%, though outliers include Romania and Bulgaria (35.8% and 33.6% respectively) and the Czech Republic, Slovakia and Slovenia (11.5%, 13.8%, 14.3%).

The Luxembourg bureau of statistics, Statec, recently found the at-risk-of-poverty rate to be 17.2%. wage inequality in the grand duchy was unaffected by the pandemic.

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