Every year the European (and Belgian) authorities publish figures concerning poverty and precariousness, based on the EU Surveys of Income and Living Conditions (EU-SILC). These surveys are carried out jointly by the statistical offices of the member states and coordinated by Eurostat. From these, it can be seen that the at-risk-of-poverty rate (AROP) in the EU for the year 2011 was 16.9 percent (European Commission, 2013). The income threshold used to define the AROP rate is set separately for each member state at 60 percent of the median equivalized disposable income in the country, and the EU average is weighted by the population size. Despite widespread consensus on the validity of this AROP rate, new problems arose with the extension of the EU in 2004. In the new member states from Central and Eastern Europe, the average standard of living was so low that the 60 percent norm looked unrealistically low. Therefore, two additional poverty criteria were introduced, namely, a material deprivation index (based on a list of necessities) and joblessness at household level. Households meeting any of the three criteria are called “at-risk-of-poverty-and-social-exclusion” (AROPE). Incorporating these criteria, the extended poverty rate for the EU was 24.1 percent in 2011, affecting 119.5 million people (European Commission, 2013). All three criteria are measured by means of EU-SILC. The importance of these indicators is also reflected in the Europe 2020 strategy, which aims (among other targets) to reduce poverty (based on the AROPE criterion) by 20 million individuals.

Apart from the three key indicators discussed above, EU-SILC produces data for a wider set of indicators relating to education, housing, health, etc. (the so-called Laeken indicators), which allow for a multidimensional comparison of poverty and living conditions (see, e.g., European Commission, 2013). Moreover, the survey is a “rotating panel,” with one quarter of the sample being renewed every year. In other words, every household forms part of the sample for between one and three years, which allows limited longitudinal analyses to be performed.