ASTANA (TCA) — Real incomes of Kazakhstan’s population fell 4.5 percent last year, the largest decrease in the living standard over the past 16 years, Kazakhstan’s Ranking.kz agency reported.
The purchasing power of wages of Kazakhstan citizens decreased for almost the entire year 2016.
During the period 2011-2015, the number of Kazakhstan citizens with incomes below the living wage reduced more than twofold. In 2016, however, the process reversed, with the number of such citizens amounting to 452 thousand as of the end of the third quarter of 2016, six thousand more than a year ago.
The number of the ten percent of the poorest Kazakhstan citizens grew faster than that of the ten percent of the richest citizens during the past year. As of the end of the third quarter of 2016, the number of the poor Kazakhstanis grew almost 27 thousand on-year whereas the number of the rich Kazakhstanis increased by 18.3 thousand.
A year ago, the number of the ten percent of the rich Kazakhstanis grew 31 thousand compared to 24 thousand growth in the number of the ten percent of the poor Kazakhstanis.
Last year, the ten percent of Kazakhstan’s rich citizens accounted for 23.6 percent of all the population’s income in the country.
The largest number of the poor people lives in the south of Kazakhstan: 289.6 thousand (as of the end of the third quarter of 2016) in the South Kazakhstan province, 201 thousand in the Almaty province, and 175 thousand in Almaty city.
One of the reasons for the decrease in the population’s incomes was devaluation of the Kazakh national currency, the tenge, against the US dollar.
