For instance, with the poverty threshold defined as 60 per cent of a country’s median income, in 2006, 72 million people in the EU were at risk of falling into poverty, and in 2001, more than half of all people in low-income households in the EU lived with the persistent risk of falling into poverty. In addition, it is estimated that one in five people in Europe lives in substandard housing and 10 per cent live in households where no one works (Commission of the European Communities, 2007). During the 1990s, poverty rates were highest in the United States, the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, Ireland, Italy and Greece.