Living conditions and well-being of households in Belarus

Olga G. Grigorieva, Max Planck Institute for Demographic Research
Pavel M. Grigoriev, Max Planck Institute for Demographic Research

Socio-economic changes emerged in Belarus in the 1990’s had dramatically affected the well-being of the households and contributed towards the deterioration of the demographic situation. Until recent years the adverse economic development was accompanied by the unfavorable demographic trends. Nowadays, the official statistics reports a steady progress in population welfare. Yet, such an important indicator of the quality of life as life expectancy at birth does not seem to respond to the improvement in living standards. Based on the data of the "Income and Expenditures of Households" sample survey we evaluate living conditions and welfare of different household types in Belarus for the period 2000-2007. In this study we use the income-based and food energy intake approaches of measuring poverty, and apply different types of equivalence scales. In addition to money-based indicators, we construct the index of living standards by means of the principal component analysis.