At-risk-of-poverty rate

Persons are considered at risk of poverty if they live in a household whose financial resources (excluding capital stock) are considerably lower than the usual income level in the country that they live in. Poverty is seen as a form of inequality; the fact that a person can be considered at risk of poverty does not depend only on his own economic situation, but also on the economic situation of other people in the country under consideration. The at-risk-of-poverty threshold is a relative measure defined in relation to the median equivalised disposable income. The European Union has fixed the at-risk-of poverty threshold at 60% of the median equivalised disposable income, the OECD at 50%. The at-risk-of-poverty rate is calculated on the entire population, with no age limit. Being at risk of poverty, therefore, means having an income that is significantly lower than that of the population as a whole, a situation that can lead to social exclusion. For households comprised of several adults with a different migration status, the same value calculated for the entire household is used for persons with and without a migration background.

In Switzerland, the at-risk-of-poverty threshold for a single person household was CHF 2495 per month in 2018. This means that a person living alone, whose disposable income was less than CHF 2495 per month, was considered as being at-risk-of-poverty. The threshold was CHF 5240 per month for a two-person household with two children under the age of 14. The at-risk-of-poverty threshold must be distinguished from the absolute poverty rate calculated by the FSO based on Swiss norms for access to social assistance.