Every third Armenian citizen is poor
The National Statistical Service today released the main results of the integrated study on living standards of home economies in Armenia in 2010.
Based on the statistics, every third citizen of Armenia (1.2 million people, 35.8% of the overall population) is poor, nearly 21.3% of them (694,000 people) are very poor and 3% (98,000 people) are in extreme poverty.
The level of poverty has increased by 1.7 percent compared to last year. According to the methodology proposed by the World Bank, poor are those whose monthly expenses don't exceed 33,517 (89.7 dollars). Those who are very poor and are in extreme poverty spend less than 27,410 drams (73.4 dollars) and 19,126 drams (51.2 dollars) respectively.
According to the information of the National Statistical Service, due to the deep economic downturn in 2009 (14.1%), nearly 270,000 Armenian citizens have become poverty-stricken in the past two years. The number of very poor people has increased by nearly 290 in the same period, while the number of extremely poor people has reached nearly 46,000.
Based on the inequality indicators evaluated by the Gini Coefficient, Armenia's population has been socially polarized.
The lowest level of poverty in Yerevan is 27.1%. The people in other municipal residences are 45.4% poor and 36 percent of people are poor in the rural areas.
Interestingly, citizens have fundamentally different views on the results of the objective studies. According to those views, whereas 35.8% of the population is poor according to the objective evaluations, only 14.6% of the surveyed citizens who are 16 years old or above have presented themselves as poor.
