Roma in an Expanding Europe: Breaking the Poverty Cycle

The report states that Roma poverty remains the key hurdle to shared prosperity in Central and Eastern Europe, and calls for inclusive policies.

A new World Bank report, “Roma in an Expanding Europe: Breaking the Poverty Cycle”, gauges the depth of poverty among Roma people in Central and Eastern Europe and proposes more inclusive, multi-part policy solutions for grappling with their development challenges.

There are an estimated 6 million Roma living in Central and Eastern Europe and 7 to 9 million in Europe overall and their numbers are growing fast. The report – one of the first comprehensive socioeconomic studies of Roma people – explores the situation in Bulgaria, Hungary, Romania and Slovakia, and also draws examples from FYR Macedonia, Serbia and Montenegro and Spain. Employment, education, health care, basic services and social assistance are analysed, as is the environment for policy development.

A key finding from the report is that Roma poverty remains strikingly high, even in relatively well-off countries nearing EU membership. Indeed, poverty rates are sometimes more than ten times that of non-Roma. For example, nearly 80 percent of Roma in Bulgaria and Romania live on less than 4.30 dollars per day.

The most geographically isolated and marginalized Roma communities are the poorest, the authors find. Accounts range from Roma eking out a living alongside the garbage dumps of Belgrade, severe overcrowding in the ramshackle homes of Stara Lubovna in Slovakia, and only slightly more tolerable conditions in the urban Roma slums of Budapest and Sofia.

Exclusion from the labor force is a key factor in perpetuating the Roma poverty cycle and in driving down living standards. Severe long-term unemployment has meant that many Roma have been without work since the early 1990s. In Hungary, for example, employment among working-age Roma fell from around 80 percent in the 1970s to 26 percent in the early 1990s. In neighboring Slovakia, reports of formal-sector unemployment rates of up to 100 percent in Roma settlements are common.

Lack of education keeps Roma out of work and limits their future opportunities for participating in society. A majority of Roma do not complete education beyond primary school. A stark example of the education gap is in Bulgaria where 89 percent of Roma had only primary education or less, in contrast with 33 percent of the non-Roma population in 2000. Few Roma continue on to secondary school, and many who do never finish. Across countries, less than 1 percent of Roma participate in any form of higher education.

One particularly pernicious problem is a tendency to inappropriately place Roma children into schools for the mentally and physically disabled. Language barriers, the isolation of Roma communities, and segregation in mainstream schools also leave Roma children behind. Roma are also segregated in under-resourced, sub-standard Roma-only schools, or within separate classrooms within mainstream schools.

Many Roma die young – on average they live 15 years less than the general population. Poor housing, inadequate access to clean water, and poor waste removal contribute to low health status among many Roma, and leave them susceptible to communicable diseases. Babies are also vulnerable — in the Czech and Slovak Republics, Roma infant mortality is twice as high as that of non-Roma, the report says.

But reliable information on Roma health is hard to come by. The report therefore urges better monitoring, especially regarding TB, hepatitis, and HIV/AIDS. It also warns that remote Roma communities urgently need better access to health care.

Despite the overwhelming scope of Roma poverty, the report sees reason for hope, so long as future policies are inclusive and empower Roma people themselves. A small but growing group of experienced Roma leaders can influence policies. In countries such as Hungary, Roma have been elected to Parliament and named to senior government positions.

Among the wide rang e of projects on Roma issues-initiated both by NGOs and governments-lie several encouraging success stories, including projects that employ Roma assistant teachers or health workers to mediate between Roma communities and service providers; education programs that prepare children for mainstream schools; and social funds and small-grants initiatives that support Roma entrepreneurship. Successful interventions include Roma throughout the process-from design to implementation to evaluation.

The report concludes that efforts to improve Roma development in post-communist Europe have been ad hoc and hard to sustain. The World Bank urges a new phase of anti-poverty efforts that will leverage the above success stories into mainstream policies, focus on reducing disparities between Roma and non-Roma, and improve conditions for Roma and non-Roma alike. But for this inclusive approach to work, the report concludes, Roma themselves will need to be deeply involved from start to finish.

Read the full World Bank report.