Around 55% of Albanian households report that they cover their monthly expenses “with great difficulty” or “with difficulty.”

This figure is significantly higher than the European Union average, where only 17% of Europeans feel poor.

In the region, 34% of Serbs, half of Montenegrins, and almost half of Macedonians consider themselves poor.

The figures come from Eurostat, which also measures subjective poverty, complementing traditional poverty indicators such as the risk of poverty, severe material and social deprivation, or living in households with unemployed members.

In this regard, Albanians rank second in Europe after the Greeks, where 67% of the population perceives themselves as poor.

However, Albania shows a large gap between the official monetary poverty rate, which stood at around 20% in 2024, and the residents’ perception of poverty, which exceeds 50% — a difference of more than 30 percentage points.

Earlier, INSTAT reported that in 2024, the at-risk-of-poverty rate in Albania was 19%, with the income threshold for one person set at 330 lek per day, or 9,700 lek per month.