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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
