Poverty risk among young adults on rise

In recent years risk of poverty has clearly increased among persons aged 18 to 34 years, according to Statistics Finland.

In 2007 around one-quarter of persons at-risk-of-poverty were young adults , but the share has increased to around one-third by 2016.

Among the share of persons aged 35 to 49 the risk of poverty has declined evenly throughout the 2000s.

Risk of poverty among the share of persons aged 65 years or older, who were below the risk-of-poverty threshold, has also declined, and slightly over one-fifth of those at-risk-of-poverty were in this age group in 2016.

In 2016, there were 623,000 persons at-risk-of-poverty, which is 11.5 per cent of the household population. In 2016, altogether 196,000 persons at-risk-of-poverty were aged 18 to 34.

Of them, 58 per cent were students. In all, 74,000 persons aged 35 to 49 were at-risk-of-poverty and around 40 per cent of them were unemployed. People at-risk-of-poverty aged 65 or over numbered around 140,000 of whom nearly all were pensioners.

Persons at-risk-of-poverty are, more often than earlier, students, unemployed and other non-employed as, especially since 2010, the share of persons at-risk-of-poverty has grown and the share of employed persons and pensioners has decreased.

Persons aged 65 or over at-risk-of-poverty were often close to the risk-of-poverty threshold of 60 per cent, or among those whose income was 50 to 59 per cent of the national median income. In turn, young adults at-risk-of-poverty are, on average, farther from the at-risk-of-poverty threshold than other age groups.

Around 30 per cent of those aged 18 to 34 below the most commonly used at-risk-of-poverty threshold (60% of median income) were also on the lowest of all, the 40 per cent threshold in 2016.