In the EU in 2021, the severe material and social deprivation rate among young people (aged 15-29 years) was 6.1%, while the severe material and social deprivation rate among the total population (all people living in private households aged 0 and up) was slightly higher at 6.3%.
Among the EU countries, the highest proportion of young people who were severely materially and socially deprived in 2021 was recorded in Romania (23.1%), followed by Bulgaria (18.7%) and Greece (14.2%). On the other hand, the proportion was less than 3% in 11 of the 26 EU members with available data: Luxembourg, Poland, Sweden, Cyprus, Czechia, Netherlands, Croatia, Slovenia, Finland, Austria, and Estonia.
At-risk-of-poverty rate of young people
In 2021, the at-risk-of-poverty rate in the EU was higher for young people aged 15-29 than for the total population (20.1% compared with 16.8%; a difference of 3.3 percentage points, or pp).
This was the case in 19 EU countries, with the biggest gap between the two observed in Denmark (12.3% of the total population at risk of poverty compared with 25.6% of young people) and Sweden (15.7% compared with 24.6%).
However, in eight EU countries, young people were less at-risk of poverty than the population as a whole. The most noticeable differences were seen in Latvia (23.4% of the total population at risk of poverty compared with 17.0% of young people), Malta (16.9% compared with 11.3%), Estonia (20.6% compared with 15.7%) and Croatia (19.2% compared with 14.7%).
