Internationally, several poverty measures have been established (by EU-specifications for the Europe 2030-Strategy): (1) Persons are considered to be at risk of poverty if they have a relatively low household income (net household income below 60 % of median income). This relative poverty measure does not show how well the household can cope with that income. (2) Severely materially and socially deprived refers to those who cannot afford at least seven out of 13 EU-defined items (deprivation, absolute poverty measure). (3) A household with low work intensity is using less than 20 % of its work-time potential. (4) Risk of poverty or social exclusion comprises those persons for who at least one of the above three indicators applies. Here, both absolute and relative aspects are integrated; no assessment can be made of the share of households that can cope only badly or not at all with their income.
Statistics Austria collects these measures using administrative and questionnaire data in the yearly EU-SILC surveys (European Union Statistics on Income and Living Conditions).