WB: Uzbekistan on its way to poverty eradication

The latest update of the Global Poverty Indicators, published by the World Bank in March 2024, includes new data for Uzbekistan for the first time, putting the country's history of poverty reduction in a global and regional context. The World Bank tracks global poverty using three international poverty lines applicable to countries at different levels of economic development.

In 2021, with assistance from the World Bank, the Government of Uzbekistan introduced a new poverty measurement methodology and set an ambitious target of reducing poverty by half by 2026. This, along with the new, available household survey data, will allow the country's poverty reduction progress to be measured by both national and international standards.

Uzbekistan, a lower middle-income country, has successfully reduced the poverty rate to 5% by 2022, as measured by the international poverty line for lower middle-income countries. The poverty rate is estimated at US$ 3.65 per person per day, at purchasing power parity.

Given Uzbekistan's aspiration to become one of the upper middle-income countries by 2030, the international poverty line for upper middle-income countries (UMICs) ($6.85 per person per day, at 2017 PPPs) is increasingly relevant for assessing poverty reduction progress in the country.

Uzbekistan's poverty rate, as measured by the international poverty line for upper middle-income countries, fell sharply from 36% in 2015 to 17% in 2022, with a faster rate of decline than in the rest of Europe and Central Asia, where the rate fell from 13% to 8% over the same period.

Growth in household income was the main factor in poverty reduction. The increase in wage income accounted for 60% of the progress made in poverty reduction. Social payments were the next most important factor, as the government modernized and expanded key programs to support certain groups of the population. At the same time, improvements in pension provision had the greatest positive impact among the various social benefits received by households.