Complete the account of how the European Union measures poverty.

The at-risk-of-poverty threshold is set at 60 per cent of the national median equivalised disposable income. Equivalisation uses the modified OECD scale, which weights the first adult at 1.0, each further person aged 14 or over at 0.5, and each child under 14 at 0.3. The broader AROPE indicator adds severe material and social deprivation and households with very low work intensity.

The equivalence weights encode an assumption worth noticing: that households share resources and that living together is cheaper per head. Both are contested, evidence on intra-household distribution suggests resources are not always shared equally, particularly between women and men, and every poverty statistic built on the household as the unit inherits that assumption silently.