The report that looks into the social exclusion in Armenia shows how much the population is deprived of participation in economic, social and civil processes; for example, it states how much a resident of an Armenian village participates in working out a development policy for his or her community or in the choice of education methods at schools.

The report ‘On Regional Human Development Beyond Transition Towards Inclusive Societies’ examines the level of the population’s inclusion in society seven former socialist countries of Europe and Central Asia. The index of social exclusion in Armenia as compared to Macedonia, Kazakhstan, Moldova, Serbia, Tajikistan and Ukraine is not only the highest but also the deepest – having a coefficient of 11.6.

“During our research we found out that there are two Armenias – Yerevan and the rest of Armenia. As compared to other countries, Yerevan is in the middle position by its index of social exclusion, as for Armenia without Yerevan, it is in a low position,” said Balazs Horvath, responsible for Poverty Reduction Bratislava Regional Center of UNDP Europe and CIS countries.

The social exclusion index is the lowest in Yerevan – 14, the highest in the Gegharkunik province – 46, 40 – in Aragatsotn, 38 – in Ararat and Vayots Dzor, 37 – in Lori.

Speaking about economic exclusion, Horvath said that having money and income is not enough for social inclusion, people must have the desire to participate in economic and social processes.

“In Armenia jobs are much more important for social inclusion than other economic indicators: having a job for people is much more than having an income,” Horvath explained, adding that the survey is a tool that they wanted to give to policymakers to think broader than GDP when building polices for regions.