Poverty increases in Spain due to the pandemic
The increase in poverty caused by the Covid-19 pandemic has multiplied the population that cannot afford things that a year before could, and, for example, one in 7 Galicians (14.6%) and one in ten canaries (10.7%) cannot bring meat, chicken or fish to their table at least twice a week.
The Survey of life conditions published this week by the National Institute of Statistics (INE) has revealed large territorial differences in this area, some carried over from previous years and others attributable to the emergence of the coronavirus in 2020.
In this specific “material deficiency” analyzed by the INE, together with Galicia and the Canary Islands also have rates higher than the average (5.5%) Balearic Islands (8.7%), Murcia (8.0%), Andalusia (7, 6%), Valencian Community (6.5%) and Extremadura (5.9%), in addition to Melilla, which reaches 15.2%.
On the contrary, Cantabria (3.7%), Castilla-La Mancha (3.5%), Madrid (3.4%), Navarra (3.3%), Asturias and the Basque Country (2.9 % in both cases), Catalonia (2.8%), Castilla y León (2.7%) and Aragon (1.2%), in addition to Ceuta (1.4%).
Four communities and this last autonomous city have improved: La Rioja has further reduced its percentage, which was already the lowest, by 60% (from 0.5% in 2019 to 0.2% in 2020), Aragon by half (from 2.4 to 1.2 %), Asturias by about half (from 5.2 to 2.9%), Catalonia by 28% (from 3.9 to 2.8%) and Ceuta by 62% (from 3.7 to 1 ,4 %).
Cantabria has multiplied by more than four the percentage of its population with this deficiency (from 0.9% in 2019 to 13.7% in 2020), the Valencian Community by 3.6 (from 1.8 to 6.5%), the Canary Islands by 2.3 (from 4.6 to 10.7 %), Balearic Islands by 2.2 (from 3.8 to 8.7%), Extremadura by almost two (from 3.1 to 5.9%), Galicia by more than 1.5 (from 9.1 to 14 , 6%), Andalusia by 1.5 (from 5.0 to 7.6%), Basque Country by 70% (from 1.7 to 2.9%), Madrid by 26% (from 2.7 to 3 , 4)% and Melilla by more than two (from 7 to 15.2%).
Three other communities have increased this percentage in a much less marked way: Castilla y León (from 2.2% in 2019 to 2.7% in 2020), Navarra (from 3.0 to 3.3%) and Castilla-La Mancha (3.4 to 3.5%).
In INE it also includes in its study, among others indicators of economic hardship, the percentages of the population that cannot afford to keep the house at an adequate temperature or have a computer.
Regarding the possibility of have a computer at homeOnce again, the Canary Islands, among the autonomous communities, have the highest percentage of the population that cannot afford it for economic reasons, 11%, although Ceuta exceeds this figure with 13.1%. Also worse than the national average (5.9%) are Murcia (8.4%), Extremadura (8.0%), Valencian Community (7.8%), Andalusia (7.2%) and the Balearic Islands (6.7 %).
In all the communities this index has worsened except in the Basque Country, which has fallen by 36.5% (from 4.1 in 2019 to 2.6% in 2020); Ceuta, 27.6% (from 18.1 to 13.1%) and Castilla-La Mancha, 24.6% (from 6.9 to 5.2%)
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