I too was surprised at the recent reduction in poverty in Armenia or rather that it fell so dramatically. However, some comments as someone who's worked on this issue almost solidly for the past 3 years.

Firstly, re. the ICG report and figures of 55% living below the poverty line: I'm assuming they just consulted materials that were old. Even by official statistics for last year (which are generally quoted by all international agencies) poverty stood at 49%.

But on to the most important issue: Has poverty fallen from 49% to 43% or whatever was quoted. On this, I would say maybe. Certainly, I have no reason to doubt the findings of the household surveys conducted by the National Statistics Service in cooperation with PADCO (http://www.padco.am). However, it is important to note that the figures -- which btw: take into account remittances from abroad -- refer to the officially designated national poverty line so when we talk about poverty in Armenia we are referring to those people who are poor by Armenian standards. On the other hand, this is customary for all countries. ie. a definition of poverty is going to be different in a country such as England as it's going to be different in a country such as the United States or in this case Armenia.

And just to confuse matters, not only is poverty an exceedingly difficult thing to define anyway, but Armenia, Azerbaijan and Georgia have their own different poverty lines so a lot depends on that initial definition which is always open to debate anywhere in the world. Is it calorie intake, monetary income, access to health care, a combination of some or all of these and other factors?

Probably the main issue is whether or not the poverty line is set too low but again this is an issue that's raised in virtually every country including the US and UK.

I suppose the one aspect of all of this that confuses me, however, is that from all the families that I know and have visited on a regular basis ie. those living in extreme poverty is that nothing seems to have improved for them. If anything, most of these families now live in worse conditions. Another issue is that many of the families that live in extreme poverty are unregistered so children without birth certificates, for example, do not officially exist.

On the other hand -- and as I said, I have no reason to doubt these statistics -- because the numbers come from random household surveys (600 homes or something), all of this should be taken into account and I think that everything balances itself out in the end to provide for semi-reliable figures. It will, however, be interesting to see what happens when Armenia finalizes a new and more elaborated definition of the minimum consumer basket to see if that changes anything.

For example, another paradox although actually it indicates the problem of having a low national poverty line when compared to other statistics available: 43% of the population live below the poverty line but in the same survey by the NSS and PADCO three other indicators are listed although they are not official poverty lines but are main indicators listed in the PRSP:

Population with an income of $1 a day: 29.4%
Population with an income of $2 a day: 58.6%
Population with an income of $4 a day: 81.5%

Anyway, the full set of statistics that also look at breakdown of family incomes (employment, sale of agricultural produce, remittances from abroad), access to healthcare etc can be found online at: http://www.padco.am.

I suppose the main issue is that poverty is a subjective thing and very hard to define. Therefore, is the poverty line in Armenia set too low? Well, maybe but even so, by that definition, I think we can consider that in the household surveys, things have slightly improved. At the same time, the Ministry of Social Security openly acknowledge that the poverty line is set so low because the state does not have sufficient resources to address a larger segment of the population or as the 1st Deputy Minister at the MSS said to me last year, "When we talk about poverty in Armenia we are talking about people who can not even afford to eat."

Cheers,

Probably, I didn't write down these other indicators properly. Of course, in each case it's "less than $x a day:"

Population with an income < $1 a day: 29.4%
Population with an income < $2 a day: 58.6%
Population with an income < $4 a day: 81.5%

Incidentally, another useful site to visit which has these statistics and more is http://www.gov.am which should have the PRSP available in both Armenian and English.