services, such as assistance with respect to residential care, home care, community care, and rehabilitation centers. Social services can address the needs of people with disabilities by offering assistance with daily living tasks, aiding in employment endeavors, and facilitating accessibility accommodations (World Bank, forthcoming). Furthermore, multidimensional poverty is exacerbated among individuals facing additional deprivations, such as limited education, health issues, or overcrowded housing, particularly in Bulgaria and Romania. These findings highlight the complex relationship between poverty and various life domains, underscoring the need for targeted interventions addressing diverse deprivation dimensions to effectively address multidimensional poverty.

**The socio-economic and familial characteristics of multidimensionally poor individuals differ significantly from their non-poor counterparts, with Bulgaria exhibiting the most pronounced differences** . Across all countries, those at risk of poverty or social exclusion are more likely to be older, female, less educated, and unemployed, often residing in rural areas and overcrowded houses. Additionally, family structure plays a significant role, with AROPE individuals more commonly found in households with three or more children and older members. Conversely, factors such as higher education levels, employment status, and household composition involving more adults are associated with lower probabilities of experiencing multidimensional poverty. However, the impact of certain family characteristics on poverty vulnerability varies across countries, emphasizing the need for nuanced policy responses tailored to specific socioeconomic contexts. Despite common patterns, certain household types are more vulnerable to poverty in specific countries.

**Properly identifying groups to target with social policies is essential for ensuring that fiscal resources are used effectively and anti-poverty policies reach the intended population.** However, the lack of ethnic identifiers in most EU household surveys poses a considerable challenge for policy formulation and implementation.

**Our extended measure of multidimensional poverty (AROPE) indicates that about half of the population in Bulgaria, Croatia, and Romania are AROPE +, mainly because of the large percentage of individuals who are educationally deprived.** This analysis shed light on the interrelationships across multiple core dimensions of well-being and on the degree of overlaps. The fact that nearly half of the individuals who are AROPE + are deprived in more than one dimension in Bulgaria and Romania may help us better understand how multidimensional poverty can be tackled with multiple different interventions.

**When analyzing official data disaggregated by ethnicity in Bulgaria shows multidimensional poverty is notably prevalent within the Roma population in Bulgaria, starkly contrasting with national averages.** A staggering 78.7 percent of the Roma face poverty or social exclusion, far exceeding the national rate of 31.7 percent. This disparity extends across various dimensions, with Roma individuals experiencing material deprivation and low work intensity at rates several times higher than the national average. Furthermore, a significant portion—17.9 percent—of the Roma population suffers from deprivation across multiple dimensions, a stark contrast to the mere 2.9 percent observed in Bulgaria's general population. The Roma community, as a vulnerable and marginalized group, could benefit from social services policies such as social support, targeted inclusion activities, employability, lifelong learning, and food security in order

38