The poverty risk level in Lithuania is expected to fall by 1 percentage point to 19.9 percent this year, the National Network of Poverty Reduction Organisations (NSMOT) estimates.
“Although we will only have the exact data next year, the trends show that the application of measures to mitigate the effects of inflation and the increase in wages and social benefits have helped to manage the difficult situation of 2022 and have had a positive impact on the decline in the poverty rate in the country,” the NSMOT said in a review of poverty and social exclusion for 2022, presented on Tuesday.
Some 77,000 people are projected to live in absolute poverty in Lithuania in 2023, down by 1 percentage point from 2022.
The income of the richest 20 percent and the poorest 20 percent in Lithuania differed 6.4 times last year, up from 6.1 in 2021.
“The EU average is 4.74 times, so we are lagging far behind,” Aistė Adomavičienė, head of the NSMOT, said, adding that Lithuania comes third from last among EU member states, with only Latvia and Bulgaria having greater inequality.
Meanwhile, Lithuania is fifth from the bottom in the EU in terms of poverty risk, ahead of Romania (21.2 percent), Latvia (22.5 percent), Estonia (22.8 percent) and Bulgaria (22.9 percent).
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