RIGA, Jan. 17 (Xinhua) -- Lonely seniors and single-parent families are at the highest risk of poverty in Latvia, a survey released on Thursday by the national statistics office showed.
The survey, which was conducted in 2018, reveals that around 446,000 people, or 23.3 percent of Latvia's total population, faced poverty risks in 2017.
Compared to a year before, the share of people whose income was below the poverty threshold rose by 1.2 percentage points in 2017.
The statistics office noted that as households' disposable income grew in 2017, so did the at-risk-of-poverty threshold.
For single-person households, this threshold rose from 330 euros per month to 367 euros per month, and for households with two adults and two children the respective figure went up from 694 euros to 770 euros per month.
Statistics also suggest that single people aged over 65 were exposed to the highest risk of poverty, with 74 percent of people in this group subsisting on income below the poverty threshold in 2017, up from 72.8 percent in 2016.
Among single-parent households with children, the at-risk-of-poverty rate was 32.6 percent.
Meanwhile, the lowest at-risk-of-poverty rate, 8.1 percent, was recorded in the group of employed people, down from 8.8 percent a year before.
The statistics office's survey included 6,000 households across Latvia and 10,800 respondents aged 16 and older.(1 euro = 1.14 U.S. dollars)
