Eurostat: 1 in 4 young people in the EU live in overcrowded households. In Romania the share is of 65%

In 2017, the proportion of young people in the European Union (EU) aged 15-29 living in overcrowded households was estimated to be 26.7 %. This is just over 9 percentage points higher than the overcrowding rate for the population as a whole (17.5 %).

Among the EU Member States the overcrowding rate for young people varied considerably. In Malta, 4.0 % of young people aged 15-29 years lived in an overcrowded household in 2017, while in Romania the rate reached 65.1 %, Eurostat informs on Wednesday.

A total of 10 Member States had an overcrowding rate for young people in 2017 that was higher than the EU average. Among them, seven (Slovakia, Latvia, Poland, Croatia, Hungary, Bulgaria and Romania) reported that more than half of their young population lived in overcrowded households.

The largest difference in percentage points between the overcrowding rate for the 15-29 year age group and the population as a whole was observed in Bulgaria (almost 20 percentage points higher for young people). In Denmark, the Netherlands, Cyprus, Sweden and Finland, the overcrowding rate for young people was at least twice as high as the rate for the population as a whole.

The reference population covered by these data is all private households and their current members residing in the territory of an EU Member State at the time of data collection. Persons living in collective households and in institutions are generally excluded from the target population.