Madrid - 29-01-2012
http://internacional.elpais.com/internacional/2012/01/29/actualidad/1327865151_521750.html
Poverty traps the European middle class
The crisis exacerbated the problems of tens of millions of EU citizens
SPECIAL: Europe
Maria Antonia Sanchez-Vallejo Madrid 29 ENE 2012 - 20:25 CET305
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Economic Crisis
Caritas
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EU
Economic recession
International Organizations
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Greek peasants free fruit and vegetables distributed in a square in Greece. / Angel TZORTZINIS (AFP)
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Dimitris Pavlópulos has a pension of 550 euros per month, and medicines outlay of around 150. The cut in subsidies in pharmaceutical spending forced to choose between buying a gallon of milk (1.5 euros) or one of the recipes that demand their disease, because it is impossible to face both charges.
Manuel G. is a long-term unemployed who yearns for the first mileurista onslaught of the crisis. He lost his job as a clerk for three years and has exhausted unemployment benefits. No mattress family lives in a rented room and turns to the soup kitchens and clothing distribution of an NGO.
Ecuadorians and Marilisa Roberto Madera, bricklayer and a maid, has just been evicted from the house they bought six years ago in Madrid. With four children and minimum income, are hesitant to return to their country: the lack of expectations stops them, and have yet to € 100,000 mortgage.
They are the victims of the crisis areas of the company five years ago were among the middle class or lower middle, are now new poor. People who must choose between a hot meal or warm up the house between paying the mortgage or feed. Cases dynamite the traditional image of poverty in relation to begging: Increasingly, poverty is associated with normal. "Volunteers are now before our beneficiaries," said Jorge Nuno, Secretary General of Caritas Europa.
According to the EU in 2009 were 115 million people at risk of poverty and social exclusion in the territory of the twenty-seven (23.1% of the population), "not counting another 100 or 150 million on the razor's edge" says Nuno, "because two months of unemployment and a mortgage on his back sink to anyone." In 2007, before the economic situation showed signs of deterioration were 85 million (17% of the population) which was below the relative poverty line. The list includes countries like Greece, Spain and Ireland, "but also France, Germany or Austria," said Nuno.
Do not paint things better in the United Kingdom with a child poverty rate as abysmal is ranked 22 th in the twenty-seven, according to the John Rowntree Foundation. London is the city with the highest percentage of children living in poverty in the country. Tatcheriana social inheritance, cubed by the crisis, is now on the ropes at 22% of the British population (13.4 million).
The examples show the waterways of the system: household debt, the bankrupt prodigal states the existence of subsidies or shoddy work, like the millions of jobs lost in construction in Spain. "If after the 1993-94 crisis straighten the employment rate took seven years, unemployment is now much more structural: they have lost nearly three million precarious jobs," said Francisco Lorenzo, the study team Caritas.
How is the hardship? The characterization of poverty as relative economic position with respect to the country's average income and household size applies, for example in Spain, to households with incomes of less than 7980 euros a year, including social transfers (data 2009). There are two types of poverty, moderate or relative (60% of the average income of the country) and severe (40%). "Most of the poor are increasingly located far from this threshold. The poor have become poorer, but it is also true that people come the soup kitchens that had never been. Poverty rates have increased dramatically in children, one in four is in poverty in Spain, and quite in immigrants and young people, "says sociologist Paul Mari-Klose, the CSIC.
"We talk about situations of deprivation, of being unable to make ends meet, or eat meat less than twice a week. But in Spain, and Greece, Portugal or Italy, it has increased both the extent of poverty and the severity of it, and its concentration in certain groups. During the economic expansion, many young people are poorly emancipated, and are now in extreme situations. In Iceland there has been a dramatic increase in poverty especially in childhood, "says Mari-Klose.
The crisis is approaching in the statistics to reluctant PIGS (Portugal, Ireland, Greece and Spain) and Eastern European countries joined the EU recently, to ever broader layers of the population of the solids and stanchions of the welfare state came to least as Iceland following the collapse of its banking system. But the EU average has a high dispersion. Bulgaria (46.2%) and Romania (43.1%) almost doubled, according to Eurostat. At the other extreme are the Czech Republic (14%), Netherlands (15.1%) and Sweden (15.9%). Spain occupies an intermediate, 23.4%. But being in the middle of the table does not mean go unnoticed: the sum of structural risk (in 2007, about 20%), social protection deficit and record unemployment (22.8%) suggests a gloomy future.
Public policy experts agree that the three nuclei traditionally more exposed to poverty, children and adults, women and immigrants, ie, age, gender and ethnicity as factors in the intensification of the same-has added a legions of citizens without labels in a context of social spending cuts, which amplifies the effects of the crisis: "People with a very poor job, which is difficult to make ends meet and above have no support; people between 30 to 45 years, with or without family, without subsidies because they have some income, which is forced to return to their parents if you want to keep paying the mortgage, "says Joan Subirats, Autonomous University of Barcelona. "The other sectors are more guarded, but these lower middle classes were not in the spotlight. Since the establishment of social policies on work is the discriminant factor in access to or not to help, and this segment of the population is on the edge, "he adds.
The state of practical starvation of large sections of European society is not only a social problem but also has a clear political projection: more and more citizens on the margins of the system. "Much of voters per Catalunya platform [party of the extreme right, xenophobic] out of these most disadvantaged," said Subirats, "they ask, without finding an answer, why they are not entitled to a scholarship for your dining children as immigrants, one of the traditional sources of social services, they receive it. "
Although most of the experts consulted prevents the temptation to make the "new poor" the only victims of the crisis, and highlight the deterioration of previously impoverished areas, it is undeniable is that after fifteen years of good times and new rich The crisis has rolled a segment of the population, until 2007, had their basic needs met. The faithful of the balance is often the mortgage payment, and this is a feature of the crisis we have no other community partners.
But in the nightmare of the new poor are many more factors than the default. Among the newest members of the EU, the biggest drag is the inherited structural deficit, most are former communist regimes converted to forced marches, and Latvia (37.4% risk of poverty and exclusion), Lithuania and Hungary, with more 29%), and the said Bulgaria and Romania.
In Greece, the specter of hunger has become bloody reality. The retiree Pavlópulos, 75, is a beneficiary of the NGO Medecins du Monde-Greece. Since the first plan of adjustment (2010) removed many subsidies, the man uses his pension in 10 days, and then uses the distribution of medicines and food from the NGOs. "We have launched a campaign donation of medicines and food in case of extreme necessity. Without wishing to compare with Africa, we found many cases of malnutrition among retirees, children and immigrants, it is not famine, but dietary restrictions, "said Yanis Yanakópulos, spokesman for the NGO. Several teaching unions have reported cases of primary pupils fainting from hunger, the Ministry of Education says it is on notice.
2010 went almost unnoticed as the European Year for Combating Poverty and Social Exclusion. It concluded the Lisbon Strategy, which sought to do "a decisive impact on eradicating poverty," and pulled the 2020 Strategy. But the crisis has cast aside good intentions. The main objective of the Strategy 2020, 20 million reduction in the number of poor in this decade, threatens to become a dead letter.
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