Nearly half of women living below poverty line are single

Church deacon: special needs of single people have been forgotten

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In the Finnish experience, those living alone are in the greatest risk of remaining below the poverty line. This risk is especially great for women: nearly half of the females living below the poverty line are single.
      This has been the case for quite some time, but in speeches and in the political debate in general low-income singles are not remembered.
      How come?
      “The singles are a diverse group; the only common denominator for the members is the fact that they live alone”, explains professor Olli Kangas, head of the research department at the Social Insurance Institute of Finland (KELA).
     
Below the poverty line there are single students, widowed pensioners, the unemployed, those with substance abuse problems, and also individuals engaged in various types of employment. “It would be extremely complicated to devise a common argument-based social security for such a varied group”, Kangas says.
      “This mental image is a false notion and it is maintained just so that those living alone would not have to be helped or researched”, argues Turku-based church deacon Raija Eeva.
      “How can one say that families are a uniform group, when there are couples without children, single parents, old couples, and rainbow families, who all have differing needs and crises?”
     
For years Eeva has campaigned for services targeted to loners. Those living alone are the largest customer group in both mental health and intoxicant abuse counselling, as well as in the church social work services. And yet, only family work is invested in.
      Kangas, too, admits that with a single salary it is difficult to rise above the poverty line, for the society’s norm is two people’s combined earnings.
      In Kangas’s view the solution would be to improve the basic subsistence level. This would benefit everybody, regardless of people’s reasons for poverty, or whether they live alone or with someone.
      But according to Kangas, Finland is on a course further and further away from the Nordic welfare state model. Instead, the means test model is favoured, in which those living alone more easily remain outside the benefits.
     
According to Eeva, many other things besides the above average cost of living also bring together the singles in various life situations.
      To survive as a loner takes special skills and abilities, which are not always understood even by those who are trying to help.
      The singles have to be able to make great decisions by themselves and also bear and process alone the emotional burdens caused by work, financial strains, and human relationships. Somehow they have to find the energy to activate themselves, for they do not have a spouse or children to provide motivation.
     
“I meet people who at the beginning of their singlehood are social, but who after a few years mainly just stay at home reading and watching television”, Eeva explains.
      “If a person does not learn to cope with the emotional load, he or she will start avoiding situations, such as meeting people, where such loads might accumulate."
      Raija Eeva also wants to challenge the notion that the singles below the poverty line are mostly men with a drinking problem. Statistics show that the group primarily consists of working-age women.
     
Eeva-Kaisu Törönen, 49, of Nurmijärvi has twenty years of experience of being a single person below the poverty line. For the last twenty or so years she has been in a relationship, where her graduate engineer partner earns “99 per cent of the couple’s money”.
      Törönen remembers well how she gradually slipped into poverty in her twenties, when her translator studies stalled, no decent jobs were available, the study loan was unpaid, and the circle of failures started.
     
“If you fall ill, or for example your washing machine breaks down, it is always a crisis for someone who is single. You’re constantly living on the edge, and a single mishap may cause you to fall into the pit”, Törönen notes.
      “The most humiliating thing was to live as a lodger, put up by some charitable people. And when you finally managed to get a place of your own the entire paycheck from a part-time job went just to cover the housing expenses.”
     
Just under one person in five in Finland lives alone.  Women outnumber men in this respect by more than 2 to 1. Some 29% of women live alone, and only 12% of men.
      The most common age-group for singles, both among women and men, is from 45 to 64 years.
      Those living alone were at the greatest risk of falling below the poverty line in 2006, when 29% found themselves in this plight. Single parents came close, with 25%, while families with children (9%) and couples without children (6%) were well behind.
      Some 42% of those living in the lowest fifth of the population by income are singles.


Previously in HS International Edition:
  Income disparities growing faster in Finland than in any other OECD country (13.11.2008)

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