Business Update: COVID-19 pushes more Ukrainian families below poverty line


An elderly woman wearing a protective mask enters the home as she receives a charity food kit in Kyiv’s district of Troeschyna on April 23, 2020.

The number of Ukrainian households at or below the official poverty line will grow to 45% in 2020, the Social Policy Ministry has stated, as reported by UNIAN. Effects of the coronavirus pandemic in Ukraine will drastically affect the country’s society and its economy, pushing more families into poverty, the ministry and independent experts said.

The amount of families living in poverty or extreme poverty will increase by 6.5 percentage points compared to last year, according to studies by the Institute for Demography and Social Studies at the National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine. The monitoring of poverty indicators in 2019, 2018 and 2017 had shown a positive trend indicating a fall in poverty in Ukraine, experts said.