The risk of poverty continued edging upwards last year with official figures showing that more than 61,000 people were living below the acceptable threshold.

The figures were released by the National Statistics Office yesterday just a week after the EU’s statistical agency Eurostat released similar figures pertaining to 2008, which also showed an increase in poverty when compared to the previous year.

Just over 15 per cent of people living in private households were at risk of poverty in 2009, an increase of half a percentage point over the previous year.

The threshold for calculating the number of people who are at risk of poverty stood at €5,961 last year and 61,278 people had an income below this threshold. Of these, 11,891 had an income less than 40 per cent of the threshold.

According to the NSO, people under 18 and those over 65 (21 per cent and 19 per cent respectively) were at greater risk of poverty.

However, despite the higher risk faced by the elderly, those over 65 at risk of poverty dropped by 2.5 percentage points.

The figures also showed people living in households with dependent children tended to face a higher risk of poverty than people in households without children.

The statistics give credence to the concerns raised recently by President George Abela during his Republic Day speech when he said the gap was widening between those who were in the higher income bracket and those whose income did not reach adequate levels.

He expressed concern that a section of society seemed unable to emerge from the dire straits of poverty or the risk of falling below the poverty line.