65% of Canarians struggle to make ends meet. This is confirmed by a report which indicates that the archipelago is the second autonomous community, after Andalusia, with the highest proportion of people at risk of poverty and/or social exclusion, reaching 33.8% of the population, or some 750,000 people, out of all three.
The XVIth Report “The state of poverty. Monitoring indicators of the EU 2030 Agenda 2015-2022. The Canary Islands emphasize that if the Canary Islands were a country of the European Union, “they would be the poorest in all of Europe”, more than Romania or Bulgaria.
The increase in the cost of living means that 64.8% of the population (around 1.4 million people) report having difficulty making ends meet4.1% more than last year and 16.3 points above the national average, being the autonomous community with the highest indicator.
Nevertheless, this figure improved by 2.4 percentage points compared to that recorded in 2022 and represents the third consecutive year of reduction in this indicator.
but it is still a “very slow and insufficient” decrease and which remains far from the AROPE rate recorded at the state level, which is 26.5%.
Likewise, the effect of the increase in the cost of living is manifested in the fact that almost 65% of the population of the Canary Islands (around 1.4 million people) report having difficulty making ends meet, or 4.1% more than last year.
This report highlights the Canary Islands as one of the autonomous communities where the rate of risk of poverty, extreme poverty and serious material and social shortage has decreased the most, because if no measures had been taken, the rate of poverty would have increased by 24.9 points and would reach 51% of the population.
Specifically, 26.1% of the population of the Canary Islands is at risk of poverty (578,000 people), 3.3 points less compared to the previous year and 5.9 points above the national average, being the third autonomous community with the highest rate. Furthermore, 9.5% of the population is at risk of extreme poverty (215,000 people), i.e. 3.5 points less than in 2022 and the community with the sixth highest rate.
In addition, the Canary Islands are the community with the highest relative increase in average income, from 10,716 euros in 2022 to 12,177 euros in 2023, which contributes to reducing its levels of inequality. However, the real average income per person in the Canary Islands is 9,396 euros. If we take into account the variation in the cost of living and therefore update them according to the CPI, this has only increased by 1,462 euros compared to 2015.
Other indicators, such as that reflecting the percentage of people belonging to households with low employment intensity, have not seen significant improvement in the archipelago. More specifically, 14.3% of the population (316,461 people) live in households in which less than 20% of their total employment potential is exploited.
Regarding the gender gap, the feminization of poverty This remains a structural problem. Thus, the data reveals that 35.2% of women are in a situation of poverty and/or social exclusion, compared to 32.4% of men. The rate for women decreased by 3.1 points over the past year, but remains 3.2 points higher than that of men.
Children are also at risk and maintain “unbearable figures”with approximately 44.5% of children and adolescents in the Canary Islands at risk of poverty and/or social exclusion (approximately 157,739 children under 18). Despite a drop of 3.3 points compared to the previous year, it presents a very high rate compared to other age groups.
If we take into account the place of residence, the poverty rate in the rural areas of the islands is 30.8%, while in urban areas this rate falls to 25.9%.
