# V. Conclusion and Policy Implications

**The European Union showcases remarkable progress in living standards, yet welfare inequalities persist across its regions and demographic groups.** Recent data indicates a decrease in the anchored at-risk-of-poverty (AROP) rate for EU27 countries, yet significant monetary poverty disparities endure among member states. Moreover, wide disparities in social and economic outcomes persist across diverse groups, potentially jeopardizing social cohesion and necessitating tailored policy responses.

**Despite progress, multidimensional poverty remains a challenge. Analysis of individual countries reveals stark variations, with Romania and Bulgaria experiencing notably high poverty and social exclusion rates.** Vulnerable groups such as the elderly and children are disproportionately affected, with rural-urban disparities exacerbating socio-economic deprivation. Distinguishing between temporary and persistent poverty is crucial for effective policy formulation, and systemic challenges persist, particularly among marginalized communities like the Roma. Addressing these multifaceted challenges necessitates comprehensive policy interventions tailored to different contexts and informed by accurate data collection methods that account for diverse population groups' specific needs **.**

**To comprehensively analyze multiple deprivations and the at-risk-of-poverty or social exclusion (AROPE) indicators among vulnerable groups within the European Union, this paper relies on the latest cross-sectional and longitudinal data from the European Union Statistics on Income and Living Conditions (EU-SILC).** This extensive survey spans 27 EU member states, along with Iceland, Norway, and Switzerland, collecting data on income, poverty, social exclusion, and living conditions of individuals aged 16 and above within private households, which employs a stratified multi-stage sampling approach, incorporating both cross-sectional and longitudinal data to capture individual-level changes over a four-year period. While enabling comprehensive AROPE monitoring across EU countries, the dataset lacks ethnicity information, precluding the assessment of deprivations among the Roma population. Nevertheless, to analyze poverty and multiple deprivations among the Roma community, we used the latest available national SILC data from Bulgaria (2021), leveraging the AROPE framework and the longitudinal components for a nuanced understanding of persistent socio-economic challenges among this group over time.

**Our results show that the incidence of inequality in outcomes across a range of social and economic indicators is still high, with wide disparities between national averages and specific population groups (including Roma and other vulnerable and marginalized communities).** This is important as it can potentially affect social cohesion and societal well-being (Vergolini, 2011; Wilkinson & Pickett, 2009) and reshape national and European policies and institutions.

**While the European Union-27 (EU-27) witnessed a marginal decrease in absolute multidimensional poverty recently, different rates of progress are observed across EU subregions** . Among the EU subregions, Southern Europe (SE) experienced the largest decline in the AROPE rate, dropping from 26.0 percent in 2020 to 24.2 percent in 2021, marking a decrease of 1.8 percentage points. Conversely, Central Eastern Europe (CEE) exhibited the lowest decline, with its AROPE rate decreasing only slightly from 17.4 percent to 16.8 percent, reflecting a small

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