Ukraine's poor majority: Exploring the driving factors of subjective poverty

Abstract

Existing scholarship indicates that subjective and objective poverty hardly overlap. This study contributes to our understanding of what different types of poverty mean by analysing the drivers of subjective poverty in Ukraine, whereby in 2018 71.8% of people self-identified as poor despite the relative material deprivation measures estimating poverty to be around 30%. To understand the drivers of subjective poverty, the paper draws on 50 in-depth semi-structured interviews across low- and high-income individuals, of which 38 self-identified as poor. Data suggests that the self-perception of being poor is driven by Ukraine's relative deprivation to other European countries, fears about the future due to vulnerability to shocks, and the perception of purposeful exclusion by the economic elite. In exploring these findings, the paper contributes to the works of literature on social status, social exclusion, relative deprivation, and populism.