Material and social deprivation in Norway

The purpose of the report is to examine poverty and deprivation in the population based on how people themselves perceive their financial and material situation. The main part of the analyses is based on data from the Survey on Living Conditions EU-SILC 2015. The report looks at the extent of material and social deprivation and financial difficulties among the population, and shows which population groups are most exposed to such problems.

Chapter 2 presents the data and definitions. In the same chapter, we discuss whether groups at risk of poverty are underrepresented in the sample in the Living Conditions Survey. The proportion of low-income households in the Living Conditions Survey is somewhat smaller than in the income register, which covers the entire population. Immigrants are also underrepresented in the survey data, particularly those with a short period of residence and limited Norwegian language skills. Thus, the extent of self-reported poverty and deprivation in this report should be regarded as a minimum estimate.

Chapter 3 looks at the extent of different forms of deprivation, while Chapter 4 deals with financial difficulties. The groups that report most poverty-related problems are social assistance recipients, single parents, low-income households and immigrants from Africa, Asia etc. Of the goods surveyed, those that the largest proportion of the population cannot afford are new furniture (6 per cent), a car (5 per cent), a one-week holiday away from home (5 per cent) and dental treatment (4 per cent). These are also the goods that most people lack in the most disadvantaged groups, while a greater proportion of them also lack new clothes, eating meat or fish on a weekly basis and social activities such as leisure pursuits and eating out.

Chapter 5 shows changes in poverty-related problems in the period 2009-2017. Generally, the proportion of people facing deprivation is stable, with little indication that deprivation levels have increased during the period studied. However, it is important to note that the percentage of respondents in the Living Conditions Survey with a low-income has decreased somewhat over the same period, while the opposite trend is observed in the income register, which is a full census. If the most disadvantaged are increasingly underrepresented in the living conditions data, we are at risk of underestimating a potential increase in poverty in the population based on this data.

Low income is a widespread measure of risk of poverty. However, many who belong to a low-income household do not report poverty-related problems. In Chapter 6, we also see that about half of those who lack certain goods do not belong to a low-income household. This reflects the complexity of the poverty phenomenon and shows the importance of supplementing measurements of income with examinations of self-reported poverty-related problems. The analyses show that people in low-income groups who lack certain goods differ from others in the low-income group in that they are younger, living in central areas, and are more often immigrants and outside the labour market.

The extent of material and social deprivation among children is mapped in Chapter 7, where it is shown that deprivation among children in Norway is not very common. Nevertheless, families that have low incomes, only basic education, a weak attachment to the labour market, receive social assistance and are immigrants more often report that the children lack certain goods and that they do so simultaneously. The analysis shows that children who grow up in economically disadvantaged families are most likely to find that they cannot afford the same social benefits as other children. These groups are also more likely to report a lack of basic goods and consumer goods