“Nearly 1M people in Finland at risk of poverty and social exclusion”. What do you think about the problem ? Finland has been seen as a rich country with high GDP despite low population. What is the definition of being “poor” in Finland ? As I see the social support and well-fare is still somewhat to help struggling families be able to afford the basic like housing, education, healthcare service. Of course there are people choose to be homeless due to drug addiction or mental health. But it’s hard to believe the “poverty” as I have seen people who really struggle with poverty in other countries, like children cant go to school, they live under the bridges etc.
by Regular-Love7686
20 comments
Well we are heading in to recession so that might explain it, also there is literally no jobs so we cant work even if we wanted
According to which standards? I understand that specific groups exists always, but I’m sorry.
I remember reading the article about a woman living with kids who had only 5€ left. The article included calculations of how she spends her 4k for life, house, hobbies, food, and, after all, yes, just 5€ or something.
Homelessness has increased in Finland again after long period of declining numberd. Among those are people who are working. So not those you would call drug addicts.
Only 1,45 million people, 26% of population, earned enough in 2022 to pay state tax. That was 19200 EUR/year. Since then unemployment figures have only worsened.
In my opinion, 19200 euros a year is already borderline poor, so 3 out of 4 Finns are poor. The idea of “rich Finland” to me is synonymous to being able to extract enough taxes from the remaining 1/4th to sustain a welfare state, something that is obviously not feasible anymore.
There is multiple ways to define poverty. In general the poverty line describes the income level below which a person cannot afford to purchase essential goods to maintain a tolerable standard of living.
Without going into the details in Finland it’s ~1400€/month for single person household. Poverty you are describing is what UN measures <1$/day. With that kind of money in Finland you would starve to death in a week if cold doesn’t kill you first.
PS. Nobody decides to become homeless!
As a Finn, I find this a bit hard to believe. Yes, the economic situation isn’t the best, people are losing their jobs, and the cost of everything is astronomical. However, Finland’s population is 5,6M. Is the article really saying 20% of people in Finland live in poverty?
Ah, nvm. It’s counting uni students as living in poverty. The definition in cludes those living temporarily with low income such as temporary unemployment or studying. The number of those people is 800k. The real number of those living in long-term poverty is 100k.
Looks really like paruzzian propaganda
The EU wide figures are here: https://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/web/products-eurostat-news/w/ddn-20240612-1
According to it finland is the third lowest.
The low income part is likely defined as below 60% of the median income of the country so what counts as poverty is different in different countries. Basically if everyone is equally poor then there’s no poverty.
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EDIT: To those interest here’s more interesting data: https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/poverty-share-on-less-than-30-per-day
Its what share of the population lives under 30 US dollars/day adjusted to the price levels of different countries.
Nobody chooses to be homeless due to mental health. It can affect anyone and if they don’t get proper help then that will negatively impact them.
You’re not crazy but also nuance is important here because definition of poverty has changed over time. Nonetheless placing 20% of the population in poverty is a bit of a crazy claim. Relative poverty in Finland is about 9% according to OECD which is far lower.
Poverty in first world countries are usually measured in relative terms because absolute or extreme poverty you might have been taught in school are pretty much nonexistent. [Even on a global scale extreme poverty accounts for only around 10% of world population nowadays, down from 40% in the 80s.](https://images.app.goo.gl/aenekAdyUyWuBb5fA)
I can recommend reading Factfulness by Swedish Professor Hans Rosling. It’s a fact that in the last 50 years humankind has made more progress than all the history of humanity before it.
Ask those people what their hobbies. It was a culture shock when I found out how much people spend for hobbies.
If we are comparing finland to third world countries we have already failed
In Finland, being poor is easy mode. You don’t have to have a job, housing is payed and you still have plenty of money for your infinite free time.
Poverty is financial insecurity.
You don’t have to live *”under a bridge”* to meet the criteria for being “poor”. In most countries, poverty means being unable to afford a relatively large unexpected expense—such as buying a new washing machine or visiting a private dentist—at any given time. And it applies also to Finland.
Again, this is relative poverty, earning less than 60% of median income or having risk of falling in to that group.
It is not having money for living, it is having less than others.
This metric gets better when wealthy people income comes down.
It is jealousy metric and nothing else.
The definition of relative poverty is such that there are always the poor (relative poor = income less than 60% of median income).
The limit of being “relative poverty” in Finland is around 1400e/month income for single person (in addition to a free apartment from social services). Not exactly starving or without home or healthcare.
The UN definition of “absolute poverty” is around 2usd/day income. I think there is nobody in Finland that is absolutely poor.
Austerity from the current rightwing government has definately made things worse. The broad cuts have cumulated to the poorest. Combined with inflation and unemployment it will affect more and more people. Its a downward spiral. Many people won’t be able to use even basic healthcare when it is run down and privatized.
At the same time government has decided to drive huge tax breaks to the wealthiest cutting inheritance tax, which would cost 1 billion euros. Also biggest corporations are given subsidies (400 milllion to “green energy transition” and hundreds millions to the private health sector).
It is quite possible to run out of money in Finland and not even afford food. Food banks are currently full of new customers and they are struggling to feed people. People lose their homes when they can’t afford the rents that have gone up.
Of course poverty is relative, which is linked to
inequality. You can think it in this way that if wealth is accumulated in small segment of the population, it will greatly increase inequality. The wealthiest can for buy assets like housing and drive their prices up, so the less wealthy will become relatively poorer in the process. Also when their political power increase they can funnel assets from the government to their class, which is what is happening in Finland.
I have been “poor” for 6 years in Finland, I even got a job that was poorly paid. This has been the most stable financially time in my life and I have never get so much money in my life even being able to save some.
The shitty job pay almost 4 times the salary you would get in my country. The worst part I am from Spain.
There are a lot of poor people in Finland. Many suffer because of unemployment, bad health problems, etc. Many privileged people seem to think that our financial support systems are like magic trees that cover everything, but that’s not true. It’s very common that poor people can’t afford the healthcare and medication they need and that they are not able to buy enough food etc. There are so many poor people nowadays that churches and other places that offer free food to people are not able to help everyone anymore. The situation is heartbreaking.
Unfortunately, many people like to pretend we don’t exist. There is a lot of hate towards us and a lot of ugly stereotypes, like that poor people are just lazy and stupid, or that we are alcoholics etc. There is so much data about what causes poverty in Finland, but still many people choose to believe all these ugly stereotypes instead.
What even is “at risk of poverty”
I hate hate hate these kinds of vague statistics that are there just for clickbait
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