In May 2015, the World Bank Poverty team rolled out the Listening to Tajikistan (L2T) survey to monitor the impact of emerging trends throughout the country at high frequency.
The survey rapidly clarifies the severity of the economic downturn, the evolution of vulnerabilities, and household responses to risk and deprivation over time. It enables a focus on poorer and more vulnerable households, and generates evidence for targeted policy-making.
Results of the September 2016 round of high-frequency survey show that the monetary wellbeing of Tajikistan households is continuing to improve. It is evidenced by the fact that for the period of May-September 2016 per capita real income, on average, rose by 6 percent compared to the same period last year.
This increase in per capita income is driven by increases in specific income components, such as household remittance income, income from wages, as well as income from self-employment and agricultural activities. An interesting aspect of remittances has been the fact that they did not rise at the equal rate for all. For instance, for the period of May-September 2016, the average remittance income of the bottom 40 percent of households rose by only 9 percent, compared to the same period last year, while for top 60 percent of households, remittance income rose by 14 percent.
An increase in wages was reportedly observed as a result of official wage increases in July 2016, which affected the official minimum wage, public sector wages, students’ stipends/scholarships, and pensions. Improved incomes from self-employment and agricultural activities could be explained by the fact that the economic downturn in Russia forced a large number of labor migrants to return to Tajikistan and engage in entrepreneurial and agricultural activities, if the opportunity arose. Better harvest this year also played а role in improving income, according to the survey.
Meanwhile, despite improvements in income from agricultural activities and self-employment, the employment status of household members overall has not changed much, with the share of household members working staying roughly at 18 percent over the course of the L2T survey, since May 2015 through September 2016.
Services such as water and electricity supply reportedly fared worse this year. Both the May-September 2015 to May-September 2016 comparison and the September 2015-to-September 2016 comparison show that water disruptions were more frequent in 2016, at 10 and 4 percent, respectively. Similarly, electricity outages have been reported to have occurred more frequently this year. For example, the share of households to report any electricity outage outside electricity rationing schedule was higher by one-third in September 2016 in contrast to September 2015, namely at 50 percent.
