Europa Regionum

An aim of this paper is to present the changes in the households’ incomes and the living conditions in the European Union in the years 2005–2014. The paper uses secondary sources of information (the Eurostat macroeconomic data). Income and selected issues of the living conditions constitute the set of related items. The general estimation of changes in UE is not clear. On one hand, it is connected with the improvement of households’ incomes. On the other hand, significant disparities between countries in European Union. The European Commission has a goal to reduce the number of people at risk of poverty or social exclusion by 20 million by 2020 compared with 2008. Nevertheless, almost every fourth person in the EU was still at risk of poverty or social exclusion in 2014. The number of people at risk of poverty after social transfers in 2014 was 86.2 million (17.2% of the total EU-28 population). Next was material deprivation, covering 44.5 million people (8.9% of all EU citizens). The third dimension is low work intensity, with 41.8 million people experiencing it in 2014. (11.1% of the total population aged 0 to 59).