The latest figures released by the national Statistical Committee show that about 22 percent of Armenians live below the official poverty line, down from 23.7 percent reported by the government agency a year ago.
The poverty rate stood at 26.4 percent in 2021. In a five-year policy program approved by the Armenian parliament at the time, Prime Minister Nikol Pashinian’s government pledged to cut it by half by 2026.
Speaking in the parliament in late October, Pashinian blamed Armenia’s former governments for his administration’s failure to fulfill that pledge, saying that they “destroyed the schools.” He did not offer any evidence of that destruction or elaborate on its connection with living standards. Nor did he say what he has done to reverse a post-Soviet decline in educational standards since coming to power in 2018. His critics say the degradation of Armenian schools has continued during his rule.
Pashinian, who himself had been expelled from university before graduation, has repeatedly said that low-income Armenians tend to be poorly educated. He has also claimed that many of them are too lazy to work.
Official statistics contradict these assertions. They put poverty among employed citizens at 19 percent and suggest that the poor include more than 100,000 persons with university degrees.
The Armenian economy has grown robustly since 2022 thanks to positive knock-on effects of Western sanctions against Russia. Armenian entrepreneurs have taken advantage of the sanctions by re-exporting many Western-manufactured goods to Russia. Some analysts believe that this growth regularly touted by Pashinian has had a limited socioeconomic impact because it has mainly benefited a narrow circle of individuals and businesses.
The current Armenian government has also failed to fulfill another key socioeconomic promise. The 2021 program committed it to raising the average pension to the per-capita minimum cost of living in the country. At 49,000 drams ($128) per month, it is still well below the so-called “minimum consumer basket” which the World Bank and the Armenian Health Ministry estimated at 61,000 drams and 76,000 drams respectively.