But in relative terms, poverty is becoming more widespread as low-wage groups have not seen incomes rise, according to Pekka Ruotsalainen of Statistics Finland.
He points out that the EU’s statistics office Eurostat uses relative indicators when estimating the number of low-income and poor in a country. Poverty is defined based on a population’s median income. That said, a country’s poverty threshold rises in step with median income.
“Incomes of low-wage earners do not rise as quickly as for the middle class, which leads to more people falling into poverty,” says Ruotsalainen.
The EU’s poverty threshold for a single person is 14,000 euros.