Beating all the nay-saying that has gone on for the past months, Eurostat has revealed this week that median income rose highest in Malta among all EU countries in 2010.

Median equivalised disposable income in national currencies fell in eight Member States in nominal terms (without adjusting for inflation) in 2010 compared with a year earlier.

The sharpest drops occurred in Greece, where median income fell by 8.2%, Latvia (-7.2%) and Spain (-4.0%). It increased the most in Poland (+5.3%), Hungary (+5.1%) and Malta (+4.7%).

However, nominal changes do not tell the whole story about income changes as inflation should also be considered.

Median incomes have thus been adjusted by the annual rate of change in the Harmonised Index of Consumer Prices for 2010 to obtain real changes. After adjusting for inflation, median equivalised disposable income in national currencies fell in 15 Member States in 2010 compared with a year earlier.

The sharpest drop in real terms occurred in Greece, where the median equivalised disposable income fell by 12.3%. It fell by 6.6% in Bulgaria, 6.1% in Latvia, 5.8% in Spain, 4.8% in Estonia and 4.4% in Portugal. A sharp decrease of 9.7% was also registered in Iceland.

Median income stagnated or increased in real terms by less than 1% in Belgium, Denmark, Germany, Hungary, Slovenia, Finland and Sweden, while it increased by more than 1% in Malta (+2.6%), Poland (+2.5%), Slovakia (+2.4%) and Austria (+1.7%).

Around 10% of EU citizens cannot afford a meal with meat, chicken, fish or a vegetarian equivalent every second day. Material deprivation complements the income perspective by providing an estimate of the proportion of people whose living conditions are severely affected by a lack of resources.

Among material deprivation items, the inability to afford a meal with meat, chicken, fish or a vegetarian equivalent every second day showed the greatest change in 2011 at EU-27 level compared with 2010. The change in Member States of this deprivation item is also in some cases correlated with the decrease in income in the lowest quintiles.

In 2011, 9.7% of the EU population reported that they could not afford this item. This represents an increase of 1 pp compared with 2010. There is considerable variation among Member States. The percentage of people reporting this deprivation item ranged from 3% or less in Spain, the Netherlands, Denmark, Sweden and Luxembourg to 29% in Hungary, 30.8% in Latvia and a maximum of 50.8% in Bulgaria in 2011.

Compared with 2010, the percentage of people reporting that they could not afford such a meal every second day increased by 7.6 pp in Bulgaria, 5.7 pp in Italy and 4.0 pp in Latvia. At the same time it fell by more than 1 pp only in Poland (-1.4 pp) and in Austria (-1.5 pp).