Living Standards Measurements Study - Serbia 2002 - 2007

widows were aged over 60 and 17 percent of
widowers.
Cohabiting people tend to be worse off, this
may be explained, among other things, by the fact
that 12 percent of all cohabiters are Roma (and
almost every fifth Roma is living below the poverty
line). Only 2.6 percent of the overall population are
cohabiting and in the Roma community it is almost
15 percent.
3.3. Activity status
Activity status is a key characteristic and a
classification used on every Census and socioeconomic
survey. The threefold division of
population:
1. Active
2. Persons with personal income
3. Supported population
reflects the achieved degree of social-economic
development of a society and provides the basis for
an assessment of likely future development.
LSMS 2007 shows some shifts in the ratio of
the three categories when their proportions are
compared with data from Census 2002 and LSMS
2002 and 2003. The proportion of the active
population has grown by 3.5 percentage points, at
the “expense” of the persons with personal income
(whose proportion declined by 1.5 points) and
supported persons (whose proportion declined by 2
percentage points).
Within the active population there is a slight
increase in the proportion of those working outside
regular employment, employers (including the store
owners) and farmers, as well as an increase in the
proportion of contributing family workers and selfemployed.
But there is one percentage point less of
employed persons (temporarily and permanently
employed) and half a point less for unemployed
seeking employment.
In all the categories making up the category of
people with personal income there was a slight
decline – this was headed by pensioners whose
proportion decreased by one percentage point
compared to 2003.
Within the category of the supported
population it is worth noting the decline in the
proportion of housewives (from 9.6 percent in 2003
to 5.5 percent in 2007). It is usual for the older
female population, with a basic education level,
primarily in rural areas, to choose this status,
.
despite the fact many of these women are actively
involved in agricultural activities. The status of
housewife is chosen more often by the older,
patriarchal female population while younger, more
emancipated and more educated women are less
likely to declare themselves as housewives. The
mortality of the elderly female population also
directly affects the decline in the proportion of
housewives in the overall activity status structure.
Despite the decline by around one percentage
point compared to 2003, the proportion of employed
(regularly employed) persons is still the main type
of activity status (24.6 percent). However, the
increase in the proportion of people working outside
formal employment, employers, individual
agricultural workers, self-employed persons,
contributing family members and others actively
performing an occupation indicates that the labour
market trends, under the influence of the transition
processes, are slowly shifting from formal to
informal sector. Formal employment provides the
greatest material security since employed persons
have a dominant presence among the population in
the 4 th and 5 th consumption quintiles (the richest)
while pensioners and individual agricultural
workers who have the highest presence in the 1 st
and 2 nd – the poorest quintiles.
Regionally, the data shows that the proportion
of formal employment is high, especially in
Belgrade (30 percent). The only exception is South
East Serbia where the proportion of children, pupils
and students is highest (24.8 percent) then followed
by employed people (21.2 percent).
Examining the distribution of those living
below the poverty line by activity status, the
proportion “Child, pupil, student” is particularly
large since almost every fourth poor citizen of
Serbia is a child, pupil or student (23.7 percent).
Pensioners and the unemployed looking for a job
make up a large proportion (around 16 percent) of
the poor, as well as housewives (11.2 percent).
Prominent proportions of poor are also found in the
employed category (9.1 percent) and that of
individual agricultural workers (8.3 percent).
The ranking of activity status varies when
examining the activity status of each person in the
survey and examining whether they are poor or not
and if we compare the ranking by how many poor
people are found within each of the activity statuses.
The results can be seen in Table 4.
46 Living Standards Measurements Study - Serbia 2002 - 2007