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Whereas official poverty rates and related indicators based on EU-SILC are now widely used in national and EU-level policy documents, some of the most vulnerable groups are de facto excluded from such panels. This chapter reports the findings of a pilot of ‘satellite surveys’ to EU-SILC among homeless people, undocumented immigrants and travellers in Belgium, using simplified versions of the EU-SILC questionnaires so that comparisons can be made with the ‘mainstream’ EU-SILC data. Despite the small sample sizes of our satellite surveys and doubts concerning their representativeness, our findings do provide useful insights into on the relative severity as well as some key dimensions of poverty (education, income, family life, work, housing and health) among these hidden high-risk groups. They also demonstrate the feasibility of such satellite surveys, using simplified, multilingual and more flexible questionnaires. We therefore recommend an extension of this approach to all EU-countries as well as to other high-risk groups, and a systematic replication at regular time intervals.

This chapter examines the housing situation of households who may be considered to live in absolute poverty in the EU. As poverty is multidimensional, those living on inadequate incomes are likely to be deprived in a variety of ways relating to housing. Using the EU Survey on Income and Living Conditions, the first part of the chapter assesses the extent to which such households experience housing problems such as overcrowding and sub-standard dwelling quality. It also explores some housing-related risks they face, specifically burdensome housing costs and rent/mortgage arrears. These risks significantly increase their probability of becoming homeless. In addition, people experiencing these problems are likely to have periodic and/or on-going challenges paying for other essential goods, such as food and energy. Given the limitations of household surveys in capturing information on certain groups living in ‘extreme poverty’, the chapter also presents a case study of one group which experiences extreme housing exclusion in a relatively wealthy European society – the Roma in Ireland. The case study draws on data from a national needs assessment of Roma and highlights the specific challenges faced by this particularly vulnerable group.

This chapter investigates how changes in employment and poverty relate to each other across the European Union’s Member States. Large employment volatility was accompanied by sizable changes in poverty rates between 2005 and 2012. Based on panel regression results, the poverty to employment elasticity was estimated to be around 25% on average. The role of changes in the poverty rates of individuals in jobless and non-jobless households and of changes in the share of those in jobless households differs greatly across countries. The success of poverty reduction depends to a large extent on three factors: the dynamics of overall employment growth, the fair distribution of employment growth across households with different levels of work intensity, and properly designed social welfare systems to smooth out income losses for families in need.

This chapter examines trends at the lower tail of the EU-wide distribution of disposable household incomes. Using EU-SILC data from 2008 to 2014, it compares income levels across countries, after accounting for average price differences, focusing on levels and trends of the EU-wide low-income proportion and the EU-wide low-income gap. The analysis reveals that living standards in the new EU Member States have improved in comparison with the EU-wide median, while living standards in the crisis-hit Southern European countries have deteriorated. This indicates an important change in the composition of the bottom of the pan-European income distribution. It is also observed that no country succeeded in reducing the EU-wide low-income proportion while also reducing the at-risk-of-poverty rate. The results emphasize the need of a dual perspective on solidarity, a national and a pan-European, and the importance of reflecting further on the need of mutual insurance and true solidarity across borders.