The INS “Living Conditions of Romania’s Population” report 2024 highlights a significant increase in the number of families struggling to make ends meet.
Regarding the outstanding payments accumulated by families in Romania, the most frequent cases – 79.8% – are those with housing maintenance and those with electricity (75.0%), according to the INS. In rural areas, 18.2% of families specified that, in 2023, there was at least one situation in which they could not pay some of these important current expenses on time, more by about four percentage points compared to households in the urban environment.
If the members of households in the urban environment were more often in arrears in paying home maintenance expenses (85.9% of the households), in the rural area the highest percentage of arrears was mentioned for the payment of electricity expenses (84.3% of households). The phenomenon of arrears is more widespread in the case of households with children (17.8%), compared to those without children.