In 2013 poverty rate in was 32%, down from 32.4% in 2012 –NSS report

YEREVAN, November 18. / ARKA /. In 2013 the poverty rate in Armenia dropped to 32% from 32.4% in 2012, said Tuesday Diana Martirosova, the head of a National Statistical Service (NSS) department studying Armenian households, when presenting a report called "The Social Picture of Armenia and Poverty."

The report, prepared by the National Statistical Service with analytical and technical assistance from the World Bank is designed to assess the social situation and changes in the standards of living in Armenia from 2008 to 2013.

Martirosova said some 967,000 people, almost one third of permanent population, were regarded as poor in 2013. Of them, 13.3% were considered very poor (402,000)  and 2.7 percent as extremely poor (82,000).

Diana Martirosova noted that the level of extreme poverty in 2013 was 1.1 percent higher than in 2008, the level of very poor families was higher by 0.7 pp and the poverty rate in general was 4.4 pp higher.

"In 2013, the poverty gap was 5.9% compared to 5.1% in 2008, and the severity of poverty was estimated at 1.7% against 1.4% in 2008,” she said.

According to Martirosova, the difference between the level of poverty in urban and rural areas in 2013 was small - in rural areas it  was 31.7% and 32.2% in urban  areas.

‘The report is based on the results of a generalized study of living standards of 5,184 households in 48 urban and 202 rural communities.-0-