Romania has the highest overcrowding rate in its households among European Union states, of 48.4%, Eurostat data showed Tuesday.
Across EU member states, almost half the population in Romania (48.4%) were living in overcrowded households in 2016. This was also the case for around two in every five persons in Latvia (43.2%), Bulgaria (42.5%), Croatia (41.1%), Poland (40.7%), Hungary (40.4%) and Slovakia (37.9%), and for around one in four in Greece (28.7%), Italy (27.8%) and Lithuania (23.7%).
At the opposite end of the scale, the lowest overcrowding rates were recorded in Cyprus (2.4%), Malta (2.9%), Ireland (3.2%), Belgium (3.7%), the Netherlands (4.0%) and Spain (5.4%).
Overcrowding was also an issue for fewer than 10% of the population in Finland (6.6%), Germany (7.2%), France (7.7%), the United Kingdom (8.0%), Luxembourg (8.1%) and Denmark (8.2%).
In the European Union, 16.6% of the population were living in overcrowded households in 2016, meaning they did not have the number of rooms appropriate to the size of the household.
On the other hand, more than one in three persons (34.8%) in the EU were living in under-occupied dwellings, meaning that the dwellings were deemed to be too large, in terms of excess rooms and more specifically bedrooms, for the needs of the occupant household.
The overcrowding rate is defined as the percentage of the population living in an overcrowded household. A person is considered as living in an overcrowded household if the household does not have at its disposal a minimum number of rooms equal to one room for the household; one room per couple in the household; one room for each single person aged 18 or more; one room per pair of single people of the same gender between 12 and 17 years of age; one room for each single person between 12 and 17 years of age and not included in the previous category; one room per pair of children under 12 years of age.