Severe material and social deprivation in European households
- Eurostat dataset
- ilc_mdsd11
- Reference period
- 2025
- Unit of measure
- % of population
Key estimates
- EU aggregate (2025): 6.30 % of population.
- Highest value: Romania at 16.8 % of population; lowest: Slovenia at 1.90 % of population.
- Cross-country mean 5.84 % of population, standard deviation 4.00, coefficient of variation 68.4% across 30 reporting countries.
- Aggregate change 2015→2025: -44.9% on a constant panel of 29 countries.
How many Europeans cannot afford basic goods and services? Eurostat dataset ilc_mdsd11 reports severe material and social deprivation in European households for 30 reporting countries, with 2025 as the most recent period carrying broad coverage. The European aggregate stands at 6.30 % of population. Deprivation is measured on an item checklist rather than on income, so it is immune to price-level differences between countries.
The five highest values in 2025 are recorded by Romania (16.8), Bulgaria (15.0), Greece (14.9), Türkiye (12.0), Serbia (9.00), all expressed in % of population. At the opposite end of the distribution sit Slovenia (1.90), Poland (2.00), Croatia (2.00), Cyprus (2.20), Norway (2.60). The ratio between the highest and the lowest observation is 8.84, while the median country reports 4.65 % of population against a mean of 5.84 % of population.
Dispersion is wide: the standard deviation across countries is 4.00 % of population, giving a coefficient of variation of 68.4%. The mean sits above the median, which indicates that the distribution is pulled by the upper tail rather than being symmetric. Any European average quoted for this indicator therefore describes a synthetic country that few Member States resemble.
Between 2015 and 2025 the summed value across the 29 countries reporting in both periods moved by -44.9%. The largest relative increases are observed in Sweden (+254.5%), Finland (+230.0%), Norway (+52.9%); the largest decreases, or the smallest increases, in Croatia (-76.2%), Poland (-74.4%), Cyprus (-72.2%). Because the panel is held constant, this change is not an artefact of countries entering or leaving the sample.
Lower values are the policy-preferred direction, so the top of the distribution identifies where the burden concentrates: bringing the highest observation down to the median would remove 12.2 % of population from the European total for that country alone. The estimates above are reproducible: the dataset identifier, filter dimensions and reference period are stated in the methodological note, and the series can be re-downloaded from the Eurostat dissemination API at any time.
Methodological note
Source: Eurostat, dataset ilc_mdsd11 ('Severe material and social deprivation rate by age and sex'), extracted from the Eurostat dissemination API (JSON-stat 2.0) on the dataset update of 2026-05-06. Filter dimensions: age=TOTAL; sex=T; unit=PC. Unit of measure: % of population. Reference period: 2025. Geographic perimeter: national reporting units with two-character geo codes (30 countries with a non-missing observation); European and euro-area aggregates are excluded from the cross-country statistics and reported separately. Descriptive statistics (mean, median, population standard deviation, coefficient of variation) are computed unweighted over reporting countries. Change over time is computed on a constant panel: only countries with a non-missing observation in both the base and the reference period enter the calculation, which removes composition effects but may differ from the officially published aggregate. No imputation, seasonal adjustment or re-scaling has been applied beyond what Eurostat performs at source. Flagged provisional and estimated observations are retained as published.
Source data
The underlying series can be inspected and re-downloaded from the Eurostat data browser.