Poverty threshold

The caretaker cabinet has published a draft for public consultation, proposing an increase in the poverty line from 1 January 2025. This poverty line is a crucial indicator for developing state policies related to income and living standards and determining social protection measures, which are assessed annually. The poverty line also determines eligibility for certain social benefits.

The National Statistical Institute reports that in 2023, the poverty line for the entire country stood at 637.92 BGN per person per month within households. At this threshold, 1.3 million individuals fell below the poverty line, constituting 20.6% of the nation's populace.

The Council of Ministers determined the poverty line for 2024, which will be BGN 526, BTA reported. This was announced at a briefing by the Minister of Labor and Social Policy, Ivanka Shalapatova, after the government adopted the decision at today's meeting. The decision stipulates that the new amount of the poverty line will increase by BGN 22 or 4.4%.

The labor union Türk-İş has calculated that the poverty threshold of a family of four increased from 33,752 Turkish Liras in May to 33,789 ($1,298) liras in June.

The poverty threshold depicts the monthly amount of necessary and basic expenditure of a family of four, including food, housing, utilities, transport, education and health.

The number of part-time workers in Greece is decreasing, albeit slowly, which is a determining factor for the incomes of Greek households.

The share of the Turkish population in rented houses was 27.2 percent in 2022, rising from 26.8 percent in the previous year, data from the Turkish Statistical Institute (TÜİK) have shown.

The share of the population living in their own dwelling declined from 57.5 percent in 2021 to 56.7 percent last year, according to TİUK's poverty and living conditions survey.

Ljubljana – Slovenia’s society is ageing quite significantly, shows data released by the Statistics Office for International Youth Day, observed on Friday. The number of those between the ages of 15 and 29 dropped by 15% over the past decade, while the number of those aged 65 or more increased by 29%.

For the first time, we will have free kindergartens and nurseries from April this year. This was stated at a press conference in the Council of Ministers by Prime Minister Kiril Petkov after today's government session.

Nearly 24% of the Bulgarians live in poverty, according to data from the Action Plan for the implementation of the National Poverty Reduction Strategy.

The data also show that the country's goal was to reduce the number of people living in poverty by 260,000 by 2020 compared to 2008.

In 2020, the poverty line for the country in total is BGN 451.00 monthly per household member. At this level, below the poverty line were 1,659,900 people, or 23.8 percent of the Bulgarian population, the National Statistical Institute (NSI) reported, quoted by Nova TV.