Poverty is normalised. Cartoon of 24/06/2017 in CTXT
The report “Desprotección Social y Estrategias Familiares” by Cáritas and FOESSA Foundation concludes that, three years after the start of the new economic cycle, 70% of households have not perceived that the effects of the economic recovery have reached them. In the case of households below the poverty line, only 9% currently perceive that the economic recovery has improved their living conditions.
The report also reveals that almost 60% of households have either nothing saved or have such a small amount saved that they would not be able to live without income for more than one or two months. The poor are getting poorer.
From the results of this survey carried out during the first quarter of 2017 in more than 1,300 households spread across the 17 autonomous communities, two worrying conclusions are also drawn, among others.
Normalisation of poverty and precariousness
The first of these has to do, according to the technical director of FOESSA, “with the risk we have as a society of becoming accustomed to precariousness, and this is reflected in our forecasts, since when we are asked about our expectations in 5 years’ time, 47.1% believe that it will be the same; and only 19.9% believe that the economic situation of their household will improve. 26.4% of the population interviewed believe that it will get worse”.
Demobilisation
The second question refers to the lack of confidence in social and political participation as a strategy for improving reality. it is precisely the most vulnerable sectors of society,” warns Lorenzo, “who perceive that political and social participation is not a useful way to improve their living conditions: for 75.6% voting is useless, for 56.9% it is useless to form associations and for 61.2% it is useless to mobilise”.
Download report. PDF, 19.4 Mb
Working to be poor
The bulletin of the second quarter of 2017 of the Emancipation Observatory of the Spanish Youth Council (CJE), also shows alarming data: 38.2% of people aged between 16 and 29 are at risk of poverty and only 19.5% have been able to emancipate themselves.
For Víctor Reloba, vice-president of the CJE, Spain is“on the podium of shame, with the second highest youth unemployment rate in Europe and shows the dependence of young people on the family cushion”.
What is worse, one in four young people who work do so to become poor.
