STATISTICAL STUDY ON THE CORRELATION BETWEEN ”ENVIRONMENTAL PROTECTION EXPENDITURE” AND ”AT RISK OF POVERTY RATE” IN THE EUROPEAN UNION, ROMANIA AND BULGARIA, 2015-2024

Through this paper we wanted to evaluate to what extent the efforts that society makes to improve environmental conditions are reflected in the well-being of the population. We put two indicators into the equation:
”National expenditure on environmental protection” and ”At-risk-of-poverty rate”.

“National expenditure on environmental protection” is the resources allocated to limit or remove the negative effects of economic activities. Expenditure on environmental protection includes the amounts of money allocated by various entities (government, companies or households) to reduce pollution (of any nature: air, water, soil), waste and wastewater management, protection of biodiversity, etc.

The “at-risk-of-poverty rate” is an important indicator for assessing the well-being of a country’s population.

This article analyses the correlation between these indicators in the European Union, Romania and Bulgaria, in the period 2015-2024. In principle, financial efforts to protect the environment should have beneficial effects, i.e. contribute to poverty reduction.

The calculations showed that there is an inverse relationship between the two indicators, that is, as environmental protection spending increases, there is a reduction in the risk of poverty, and vice versa (when environmental protection spending decreases, there is an increase in the risk of poverty), but this influence is quite small.

There are, however, differences between the territorial units studied, in the sense that at the EU27 level the link is very weak, in Bulgaria it is weak, and in Romania it is of medium intensity.