Image: Young family with many debts facing financial stress

In the second quarter of 2022, most people in the EU Member States participating in the quarterly data collection on living conditions reported increasing difficulties in making ends meet, compared with previous quarters, reflecting the increase in prices since the beginning of 2022. This information comes from data on the impact of COVID-19 on living conditions and it is the result of a newly designed data collection with the participation of 11 Member States. The first results of this collection were released in June. 

In the second quarter of 2022, the share of the population that could make ends meet easily or very easily ranged from 3.6% in Bulgaria to 40.5% in Finland. The share decreased in comparison to the previous quarter in all the nine countries for which data are available, except for Italy (+0.3 percentage points (pp)). The highest decrease in the share of the population that could make ends meet easily or very easily in the second quarter of 2022 compared with the previous quarter was registered in Slovenia (-4.4 pp) and Austria (-4.0 pp). 

However, the share of the population able to make ends meet with great difficulty or with difficulty increased over quarters. In the second quarter of 2022, this share increased in comparison with the first quarter of 2022 in all participating countries, except for Slovenia and Finland, where it decreased by 0.1 pp and 0.5 pp, respectively. In the same quarter, the highest increases in this share were registered in France (+5.6 pp) and Austria (+2.7 pp).
 

Bar chart: ability to make ends meet with "great difficulty or with difficulty" (% of specified population, Q4 2021, Q1 and Q2 2022)

Source dataset:  Quarterly data collection on living conditions Q2 2022


The share of the population that was able to make ends meet with great difficulty or with difficulty varied between 11.0% in Finland and 39.8% in Bulgaria. 

Data show that more than one in five people had great difficulties or difficulties making ends meet in Bulgaria, Slovakia, Italy and France.

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Methodological notes: 

  • A total of 11 Member States (Belgium, Bulgaria, Ireland, France, Italy, Luxembourg, Hungary, Austria, Slovenia, Slovakia, Finland) joined, in the first stage, the data collection covering the period of 2021-2022. This article and the Statistics Explained article are based on the data of Q2 of 2022 and present the results for 10 EU Member states (Belgium, Bulgaria, Ireland, France, Italy, Luxembourg, Austria, Slovenia, Slovakia and Finland). 
  • Luxembourg do not collect information about ‘Ability to make ends meet’.
  • This data collection includes core variables (evolution of the household income, quality of life and financial difficulties) and background socio-economic variables (age, sex, education attainment level, activity status, household composition and other characteristics of the population). 

 

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