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Inegualities and Social Europe ] 61
activities which a person does or does not have access to in his/her life,
represents the concept of absolute deprivation or poverty, and its definition
is exactly the same across the whole community. Ihat explains the massive
disparities we observe in the Figure: the share of people living in material
deprivation is several orders of magnitude higher in the worst-off Member
States than in the most well-off countries. Once again, the countries are
arranged according to the changes in the rate of deprivation between 2008
and 2013 in absolute terms. As emerges from the Figure, Hungary has
experienced the greatest increase in the rate of deprivation, while Poland
has registered the greatest decrease.
,
,
,
,
15;
: Keen] ml
o | | I Il Il | l l | il EE | ac mam di Th II dt In | In Hl
HU EL CY MT IT LV IE UK LT EE ES BG DK PT LU NE SE SI DE CZ FR BE FI SK AT RO PL
m2008 m2013 m 2019
Figure 9: Severe material deprivation rate in EU Member States (per cent of total
population)
Source of data: Eurostat 2021h
Just like in the case of the poverty rate, the increases were temporary, and
in many cases, they were followed by an even greater decline (see Hungary,
Lithuania, Estonia, Bulgaria, Portugal). In other countries, the rate of
deprivation rate returned to its original level after a temporary increase
(e.g. Cyprus, Italy, Ireland, the UK). Despite their relatively high deprivation
rates, many Eastern European countries have managed to avoid any increase
in the rate of deprivation and, in fact, experienced a constant decline of this
indicator over the years (e.g. Slovakia, Romania, Poland).
However, the most obvious message of this Figure is that there are vast
differences between the countries we measured. This is the problem of internal
inequalities within the Union. Although this problem is rarely mentioned, it
is probably the most potent source of tensions at the EU level. At the same
time, however, we also observed a gradual decline in the differences between
countries (thus, the average difference between deprivation rates in 2019 was
much lower than in 2008).
To summarise, we can say that the financial crisis of 2008 has indeed
put substantial pressure on European societies, causing poverty as well as
inequality to rise in many - though not nearly all - of them. Taking a closer