Croatian Social Reality

AIM Zagreb, September 28, 2000

In cooperation with the Croatian Statistical Agency, the World Bank has carried out the first research into the proportions of poverty in Croatia. Based on facts provided by the research, a draft of the Study of the economic vulnerability and social well-being has been drawn up. The multitude of collected statistical figures, parameters, charts and percentages have given the researches an insight into the basic facets of poverty among Croats. In that sense, for instance, poverty as the inability to fulfill the basic physical and social needs is, in this case, more closely defined by the following basic necessities: food (a varied diet including meat, milk, fruit and vegetables); clothing; household and public services expenditures (electricity, water supply, heating, telephone), indispensable household appliances (refrigerators, gas or electrical cookers, heaters, TVs); text-books and other school accessories; social welfare costs; and finally, the means of sustaining cultural and social standards relative to the given social group.

Accordingly, a poor Croat is a Croat on a monotonous diet consisting of but two to three essentials such as bread, potatoes and milk, who spends little, i.e. only on what is absolutely necessary, and for whom everything else is a luxury. Likewise, citizens of meagre education, with no savings, unemployed, living in low-quality apartments and individual homes that are badly heated or not heated at all, are considered poor too. The poor themselves probably know best what living in poverty looks like and, according to the latest research, they constitute 8,4 percents of the Croatian population.

A public-opinion poll conducted by the Ministry of Labour and Social Welfare shows that 80 per cents of the Croats consider themselves poor. The latter, in the words of the Secretary of Labour Davorko Vidovic, represents a form of subjective poverty and is the consequence of a corrupt privatization. On the other hand, the discontent of the 80 per cent of citizens who perceive themselves as being poor, should be interpreted as the result of their discontent with the immediate circumstances of their lives.

Subsequently, the research also pinpointed four social groups within the general population vulnerable to the risks of poverty far above the national average for Croatia, namely: those of meagre education, the unemployed, the elderly and, particularly, people with no pensions and those living in the rural regions of Slavonia and central Croatia.

What living within the given existential framework looks like can best or, if you want, most movingly, be illustrated by the example of the unemployed citizen of Zagreb, B.Z, resident of E. Gomartova street. B.Z. is 58 years old, lives with his wife, daughter and eight-year-old granddaughter in an apartment measuring 73 square metres, consisting of two rooms - a kitchen and a bedroom. The building they live in is old, but well-kept. Because they are economizing on municipal services' expenses, the apartment is rather cold. The furniture and all household appliances are twenty-years-old. B.Z. inherited his mother's right of tenure to the apartment and has been paying it off by instalments ever since. By taking over the right of tenure, the family has renounced the claim to a monthly social welfare check amounting to 560 kuna.

B.Z. worked in a factory for twenty-nine years until he was fired as surplus labour in 1991. At the time, he and his wife sold the family car for 300 DM. When working, their twenty-year-old daughter earns around 1500 DM per month. B.Z's wife is a housewife and has never held a job. They are all registered at the Employment Bureau so as to ensure themselves a health insurance policy. In three years time, B.Z. will be entitled to a pension of 750 kuna per month. Now and then, approximately two to three times a month, B.Z. manages to find a short-term manual job. His wife works as a house-maid for their neighbour, earning 60-80 kunas a month, plus a chocolate for her grandson or some coffee occasionally. On several occasions last fall, Mrs B. Z. managed to sell some old clothes, shoes and bath-robes in the street (10-15 kunas a piece). In spite of everything, their situation is not getting any better. Deprived of a regular income, the family remains heavily encumbered with debts. Their daily diet consists of bread, milk, cabbage, leek and beans. They have meat on their menu only once a month, even then constraining themselves but to the cheapest kind of meat, chicken - or, to 300 grams of ground meat (12 kunas) they prepare in a dish seething with spaghetti.. A couple of times a month, they run out of coffee or tea. Their grandson's choice of food does not differ from the diet of the grownups, excluding the chocolate he gets to enjoy once a month, on the average. Once or twice a year, B.Z's sister makes them a present of some vegetables from a vegetable garden she herself keeps. But, she sustains herself on a pension and cannot afford to help them much. A couple of times a year, B.Z. borrows 200-250 kunas from a friend lucky enough to enjoy a pension. He doesn't dare borrow more, because he knows he wouldn't be able to pay his friend back.

Unemployment or the highly limited probabilities of finding a new job are, as experts like to term them, independent variables of the present social scene in Croatia and one of the two likely causes of poverty in the country, stipulated by the fact that once one looses his job here, finding a new one is tough. The other setback, as far as international experts are concerned, is the poorly developed work force. Causes favouring such a state of affairs, the experts maintain, are the legacy of the socialist model of excessive employment - which led to the piling up of labour - as well as the HDZ mode of dealing with the inherited problem by sending off the surplus labour to retirement - which, on the other hand, brought about the situation where an ever smaller number of the employed had to support an ever growing number of retired people. As a way out of the adverse situation, the experts of the World Bank are suggesting the reform of the social welfare system, first of all of the retirement policy.

At the height of the media actualization of poverty in Croatia, along with the reform of the pension, i.e. social welfare system, the issue of poverty has been additionally spiced by the Government decision to raise the price of electricity by 25 percents. In other words, yet another difficulty favouring poverty, damaging to the poor. What sort of an impression did the governmental decision make on the socially jeopardized or, what was the reaction of a woman from Rijeka when the Vice-Premier Goran Granic, instead of explaining why the Croatian citizens should bear the expenses of an aborted contract with the American company "Enron", started explaining that, among other things, the rise in the price of electricity in Croatia was inevitable when compared to the price of electricity in the majority of other European countries? Irritated by such a socially frivolous explanation, the woman stated: " Well, this decision of the Government has once more brought under suspicion the ability of Mr. Racan's administration to preserve the already fragile social peace."

Considering the second wave of bankruptcy procedures due to be carried out as of " tomorrow " in firms employing 70 000 people, the prognosis for social stability or the improvement of the social scene in the given Croatian economic context has to be more than pessimistic. Moreover, there is also the question of what the Croatian Government intends to do in order to alleviate the consequences of the petroleum shock knocking on the door? Furthermore, when will the Government, finally, instead of offering the public lengthy studies, offer a conception of the preservation and growth of the standard of living so as to put a stop to the drastic lowering of the threshold of poverty - i.e. take the indispensable steps that would ensure the Croats a standard worthy of the citizens of a Croatia integrated into the EU. Otherwise, this entire media campaign so tremendously focused on creating an image of the pro-European nature of the politics pursued by Mr. Racan and his advisory-ministerial team is on the road of losing touch with Croatian reality altogether and turning into a futile political rhetoric or forced demagogy.

Ivana Erceg

(AIM)