Poverty on the decrease?

I would be very skeptical at anyone telling me that poverty is on the decrease in Armenia. However the government has claimed just this in a report. Armenialiberty.org reports:

According to a senior official from the National Statistical Service, preliminary results of a household income survey conducted by the government agency show that the proportion of Armenians living below the official poverty line stood at 42.9 percent at the end of last year. The poverty rate reported by the government a year earlier was 49.7 percent.

The government claims that this is evidence of a trickle-down effect from the growth of the economy, which expanded by 13.9 percent in 2003 and 9.2 percent in the first half of this year.
However, as the article points as: The official per-capita poverty threshold is set at 12,260 drams ($24) a month. That means a four-member family with a monthly income worth $100 is not considered poor by the government -- a highly questionable judgment given the cost of life in Armenia.

Meanwhile, Eurasia.net.org reports on a new Armenian economic plan.

Nearly half of Armenia's population of roughly 3.2 million people lives beneath the poverty line. A slight increase in unemployment in 2003 gave Armenia a 10.1 percent jobless rate, according to government data, and annual per capita income is less than $600. Only half of Yerevan's residents have running water 24 hours per day, and electricity and phone service are sporadic at best. Outside the Armenian capital, infrastructure has crumbled still further since Soviet times with barely functional roads, derelict schools and a battered health care system.

The government is trumpeting a new program to tackle especially rural poverty using assistance from the World Bank and also the US Millennium Challenge Account (MCA) program.
Kocharyan points to the economic programs when asked about democracy and the worsening human rights record in Armenia. The opposition, as yet only united in their dislike of Kocharyan, does not seem to have an alternative plan for alleviating poverty and rooting out corruption.

Posted by Matt on September 08, 2004 | TrackBack | Email to a friend