Poverty rate declined in Artsakh by 3.4 percent in 2015
Today the National Statistical Service of the Republic of Artsakh has presented the final results of the Households’ Integrated Living Conditions Survey 2015.
As the information department of the National Statistical Service of NKR reports in 2015 the service conducted an integrated survey of the living conditions of the households in line with internationally accepted methodology in the 1620 households of NKR, out of which 765 surveys were conducted in urban areas and 864_in rural areas. The results of the survey show that the 22.8 percent of the NKR population live in poor conditions and the share of people in extreme poverty makes up 6.5 percent. In comparison with the figures of 2014 (26.2 percent poor and 6.0 percent extremely poo), the poverty rate has declined in Arstakh by 3.4 percent.
The poverty rate in the urban areas makes up 26.2 percent to compare with the 19.1 percent in the rural areas. Thus the majority of poor and extremely poor are urban dwellers.
The poverty rate has been measured in accordance with the consumption and income indicators. According to the survey income based poverty rate is over 1.3 times higher than the consumption based poverty rate.
The poverty rate is higher among the children under 5 years, children of 6-9 and 15-17 age groups. The lowest level of poverty has been observed among the people aged 45-49.
The survey results reveal that the society rarely applies to primary health care services, which is based on the fact that people are mainly engaged in self-treatment.
According to the Households’ Integrated Living Conditions Survey 2015 55 percent of the survey participants have named the pension as their source of income. If payments of social transfers (pensions and monetary social assistance) are eliminated and the poor sector of the population does not manage to compensate the income due to other income sources the rate of poverty and extreme poverty will significantly increase up to 45.6 percent.