In Every EU Country, the Risk of Poverty Falls as Education Rises

Three education groups, one income line

The at-risk-of-poverty rate counts people whose household income, adjusted for the number and age of the people it has to support, falls below 60% of the median in their own country. Eurostat publishes it for adults aged 18 and over, split by the highest level of education each person has completed. The levels follow ISCED, the International Standard Classification of Education, grouped in three: at most lower secondary school; upper secondary or post-secondary courses below university level; and tertiary education, which takes in university degrees and equivalent higher vocational qualifications.

This is the income test alone. The EU's headline social indicator, at risk of poverty or social exclusion, also counts severe material and social deprivation and very low work intensity. Because it adds conditions to the income test, its rate for any group can only equal or exceed the one shown here, and the two are different measures rather than two readings of the same one.

In 2025, 26.9% of EU adults whose schooling ended at lower secondary level or earlier were below the line. For adults with upper secondary education the rate was 14.7%, and for graduates 7.7%. On those published rates, the least educated group is about three and a half times as likely to be at risk of poverty as the most educated, a ratio computed here.

The same order in every Member State

The ranking of the three groups never changes. In each of the 27 Member States the least educated group has the highest rate, upper secondary comes second and graduates have the lowest, and in twenty of them the rate for the least educated is more than three times the rate for graduates.

So the existence of the gradient is not in question anywhere in the Union. What separates the countries is its depth, and the point on the way up at which the risk falls.

Where adults without upper secondary education are most exposed

Croatia records the highest rate for this group, at 47.2%. Bulgaria follows at 46.5%, Lithuania at 46.1%, Latvia at 43.7% and Cyprus at 40.3%. In those five Member States at least two adults in five with this level of schooling live in a household below the line.

The lowest rates are in Denmark at 15.2%, Finland at 18.9% and Belgium at 19.2%, the only three below 20%. Fourteen Member States are above the EU rate of 26.9% and thirteen below it.

Graduates, ranked on their own

Among graduates the order is a different one. Estonia records the highest rate at 13.7%, then Latvia at 11.9%, Austria at 11.6%, Lithuania at 11.0% and Malta at 10.4%. At the bottom are Romania at 1.0%, Hungary at 3.1%, Czechia at 3.5% and Cyprus at 4.1%.

Romania and Cyprus are among the six highest rates for the least educated and among the four lowest for graduates: 39.8% against 1.0% in Romania, 40.3% against 4.1% in Cyprus. Austria runs the other way. Its rate for the least educated, 28.2%, is close to the EU figure, while its graduates are more exposed than those of every Member State except Estonia and Latvia.

Where the largest drop in poverty risk occurs

Setting the three rates side by side, as differences in percentage points derived from the published figures, shows that the risk falls at different steps in different places.

In Bulgaria, Croatia and Romania most of the fall comes with upper secondary education. The rate is 29.2 points lower for that group than for the least educated in Bulgaria, 28.7 points lower in Croatia and 28.4 in Romania, the three largest such differences in the EU. Between upper secondary education and a degree the rate drops by a further 9.6 points in Bulgaria, 11.5 in Croatia and 10.4 in Romania.

Denmark and Finland show little difference at that first step: 1.4 points in Denmark, from 15.2% to 13.8%, and 2.2 points in Finland, from 18.9% to 16.7%. In Finland the larger fall comes with tertiary education, 11.2 points down to 5.5%. Denmark has the smallest gap in the Union between its least educated adults and its graduates, and it is the only Member State where the rate for the first group is less than double the rate for the second.

The three Baltic states are above the EU rate at every level. Lithuania at 30.9%, Latvia at 28.3% and Estonia at 25.5% hold the three highest rates in the EU for adults with upper secondary education, and between them three of the four highest for graduates. Graduates there are less exposed than other adults, as they are everywhere, but all three countries remain above the EU graduate rate.

Austria is a case of its own. Its graduates, at 11.6%, are almost as exposed as its adults with upper secondary education, at 12.4%: a difference of 0.8 points, the smallest between those two groups in any Member State. Sweden follows at 2.6 points and Slovakia at 3.0.

A poverty line set separately in each country

Because the threshold is set at 60% of each country's own median, a rate locates people within their own society and says nothing about an income that could be compared across borders. Romania's 1.0% does not mean that Romanian graduates are richer than Austrian ones at 11.6%. It means that very few Romanian graduates fall into the lower part of the Romanian income distribution, while more Austrian graduates fall into the lower part of the Austrian one.

For the same reason a deep gradient is not a measure of what education earns. It can also depend on how unequal incomes are, on who makes up each group and on the households they live in, and this table records none of those things.

The EU series since 2015

The EU aggregate begins in 2015. Since then the rate for the least educated has stayed between 25.6% and 26.9%, and the 2025 value matches 2021 as the highest in the series. Graduates have stayed between 7.3% and 8.0%. Subtracting one published rate from the other, the distance between the two groups has widened from 17.8 points in 2015 to 19.2 in 2025.

National series moved further. In Cyprus the rate for the least educated rose from 27.8% in 2015 to 40.3% in 2025, the largest increase in the Union, with no break in series flagged along the way. Croatia went from 37.9% to 47.2% and the Netherlands from 11.6% to 22.7%, but Eurostat flags breaks in both series within the period, so neither change is fully comparable. Estonia moved the other way, from 36.6% to 31.5%, the largest fall in a series with no break flagged along the way; Belgium's rate fell further, from 24.9% to 19.2%, but across a break in 2019.

Who sits in each group

Education here is the highest level completed, for everyone aged 18 or over. An 18-year-old still at upper secondary school counts in the lowest group until the qualification is awarded, a university student in the middle group until graduation, and a pensioner who left school decades ago in the same group as a young adult who left last year. The table gives no breakdown by age or by activity, so it cannot separate the poverty risk attached to little schooling from the risk attached to being a student, retired or out of work.