By Ljilja Cvekic

BELGRADE, May 18 (Reuters) Roma are the largest minority group across the Balkans, but most of them spend their life in poverty, illiterate, underfed and marginalised by society, a study by the U.N. children's agency UNICEF showed.

Census data from Bosnia, Serbia, Montenegro, Albania, Macedonia, Romania and Bulgaria put the Roma, or Gypsy, population at some 3.7 million people. The World Bank says it is over 15 million in reality.

''Roma have no jobs because no one will hire them, they are uneducated, have no water, no electricity, no books for their children and everybody hates them,'' the study quoted a teacher from Serbia as saying.

The Balkans is believed to be home to the largest number of Roma in the world. They are treated with suspicion and hostility by their fellow citizens, many of whom see them as clannish, lazy and thieving.

The report showed that most live under the poverty line: 78 per cent of Roma in Albania, and 66 per cent in Romania, live on less that 4.30 dollar a day. Some 53 per cent of respondents reported going hungry on a regular basis across the region.

''We eat from the garbage bins,'' a woman from Romania said.

Half of the 600 settlements in Serbia were categorised as ''unsanitary slums'' in the survey, which noted that Roma children in Serbia were six times more likely to be underweight than their ethnic Serb counterparts.

''The environment of a Roma child is one of marginalisation, poverty and exclusion,'' said Svetlana Marojevic of UNICEF's Belgrade office that coordinated the survey. ''They are in fact invisible, living on the margins of societies that don't care.'' Only 13 per cent of Serb Roma complete primary education, often ending up in special schools for children with learning difficulties because of their poor language skills.

UNICEF called on states to battle discrimination, especially in schools, saying education was the only thing that could break the cycle of poverty and exclusion.

In five out of seven countries surveyed, less than 1 percent of Roma made it to university. Their unemployment rate across the region was upwards of 44 per cent, reaching 100 per cent in Bosnia.

''Companies advertising jobs never say 'we want no Gypsies'; but once you show up, you have no chance,'' a Roma from Bulgaria was quoted as saying.

REUTERS NY PM0925