Extreme poverty was defined in the study as an income below €210 per month in 2023 for a single-person household, and €569 for a family of two adults and two children.
This is not to be confused with the so-called statutory poverty level defined by the state. Households falling below this level receive an income supplement to help them survive.
Last year, more people were in extreme poverty and needed benefits to keep them nourished and warm as the statutory poverty level was kept unchanged at €179 per month during a year in which prices rose by 10.9%.
As a result, some 6.6% of all households fell below the extreme poverty threshold.
More of those who were qualified as extremely poor were of pensionable age. Families with large numbers of children, who used to dominate the list, have been effectively raised out of poverty by a child benefit scheme introduced in 2018.
For older citizens, however, the situation is different. While the minimum monthly pension, which was €411 in 2023, was enough to live on, not all old people received it. A report in the spring by Poland’s Social Insurance Office (ZUS), which pays out pensions, indicated that around 400,000 people had not qualified for a minimum pension, not having paid enough social security contributions.
In the worst case, one person received a monthly pension of 3 groszy, or less than one euro cent. Observers put such anomalies down to Poland’s Wild West approach to capitalism in the 1990s and 2000s, when many people now at pension age were paid under the counter without contributing anything to ZUS.
Pensions rose on July 1 after a significant increase in the statutory minimum wage, to which benefits for older people are linked.
Poland's situation is not unique in Europe, nor is it the worst case. The 2023 Living Conditions in Europe report indicated that 21% of the EU population, equivalent to 94.6 million people, were at risk of poverty or social exclusion.
This figure represents a slight decrease compared to the previous year, which saw 95.3 million individuals in this category.
Poland, with an exclusion rate of 16%, was well above average.
