The COVID-19 outbreak in 2020 and 2021 affected living conditions in the EU. From decreased income to reduced working hours and social distancing rules, individuals across the Member States were all affected, even if differently. To assess these changes, Eurostat and national statistical institutes designed a new data collection that already has the participation of 11 Member States.
The first results of this new data collection show that in the last quarter of 2021, at least 20% of the population of the Member States with available data (Belgium, Bulgaria, Ireland, France, Austria, Slovenia and Finland) could make ends meet easily or very easily, except for Bulgaria, where this share was 4.4%. The highest percentage was observed in Finland (43.7%).
The share of the population able to make ends meet with great difficulty or with difficulty ranged from 9.2% in Finland to 37.0% in Bulgaria.
Source dataset: special extraction
For more information:
- Statistics Explained article on living conditions - quarterly statistics
- Dedicated section on COVID-19
- Database on COVID-19
Methodological notes:
- A total of 11 Member States (Belgium, Bulgaria, Ireland, France, Italy, Luxembourg, Hungary, Austria, Slovenia, Slovakia, Finland) joined in the first stage of data collection covering the period of 2021-2022. This article and the Statistics Explained article are based on the first data from this new data collection in Q4 of 2021 and presents the results for eight EU Member states (Belgium, Bulgaria, Ireland, France, Luxembourg, Austria, Slovenia and Finland).
- The new data collection includes core variables of interest (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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