Countrykazakhstanhttpdevelopment

The Central Asian republics—Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, and Uzbekistan—were all republics of the Soviet Union until they achieved independence in 1991. (See Figure 5.4.) Officially, they are now a part of the FIGURE 5.5 Life expectancy at birth by country in Central Asia, 1990 and 2003 Johannes Linn, "Figure 6.3. A Decrease in Life Expectancy at Birth (Total Years between 1990 and 2003)," in Central Asia Human Development Report—Bringing Down Barriers: Regional Cooperation for Human Development and Human Security, United Nations Development Programme, 2005, http://europeandcis.undp.org/?wspc=CAHDR2005%20 (accessed April 10, 2006)Commonwealth of Independent States, which is dominated by Russia and includes all the former Soviet states of the Eurasia region. However, the Central Asian republics, while having a twentieth-century history rooted in the Soviet bloc and still politically tied to Russia, are fundamentally different ethnically, religiously, and economically. In one sense, the Central Asian republics are transition economies: they all had planned economies during the Soviet era and have since the 1990s gradually opened to the international market. However, their general adherence to authoritarianism and their high rates of extreme poverty make them far less developed than other former Soviet countries. The Central Asian republics have abundant natural resources and growing economies, but their human development indicators are in general seriously lacking because overall poverty has increased and human security has decreased since independence. As Figure 5.5 shows, these countries have experienced a decline in life expectancy at birth in the years since the dissolution of the Soviet Union. According to some international observers, nearly all the Central Asian republics are in danger of igniting an explosive political situation, putting the human needs even more at risk of not being met.

Kazakhstan

The United Nations Development Program (UNDP) reports in Human Development Report: Kazakhstan 2004 (2004, http://hdr.undp.org/docs/reports/national/KAZ_Kazakhstan/Kazakhstan_2004_en.pdf) that Kazakhstan saw a dramatic decline in its human development indicators immediately after independence from the Soviet Union in 1991, dropping in rank from fifty-fourth to ninety-third on the UN's Human Development Index (HDI) of 177 countries. Between 1996 and 2002, though, Kazakhstan rose on the HDI to seventy-eighth place, due largely to its steady economic growth that averaged 10.4% annually from 2000 to 2004, and as of 2005 it ranked eightieth. However, as with other developing regions, a growing economy has not necessarily translated to a decrease in poverty or an increase in the standard of living for ordinary people, especially for those living in rural areas.

The World Bank's Dimensions of Poverty in Kazakhstan, vol. 2: Profile of Living Standards in Kazakhstan in 2002 (November 9, 2004) reports that the total poverty rate in 2002 was 15% (about one in six people), down from 18% in 2001. Sixty-four percent of the poor lived in rural regions and 15% in large cities. As in Russia, poverty in Kazakhstan tends to be shallow, meaning that the greatest number of the poor are concentrated near the poverty line. The UNDP's Millennium Development Goals in Kazakhstan, 2005 reports a large gap between urban and rural households in the availability of in-house utilities. While 81% of urban households had piped water in 2004, only 8.3% of rural households did, with just 0.8% of rural houses having a hot water supply, versus 56.1% of urban houses. Although nearly 100% of both rural and urban households had electricity, just 1.9% of rural homes had central heating, contrasted with 68.6% of urban homes. Sanitation was also lacking in rural households: only 4.3% had improved sewage systems, while 73.7% of urban households did. This situation in particular seems to be worsening over time. In 1999, 73.9% of urban and 10.4% of rural houses had access to a sewage system. Given that the public expenditure on health has been decreasing since 1995, this is a partial explanation for these worsening conditions. (See Figure 5.6.)

According to the UN's report MDG1: Eliminate Extreme Poverty and Hunger (2005, http://www.undp.kz/library_of_publications/files/1568-75446.pdf), Kazakhstan has already achieved the first MDG of halving extreme poverty by 2015, reducing its total poverty incidence from 39% of the population in 1998 to 16.1% in 2004. In rural regions, however, the poverty rate averaged 24.8%, almost three times the rate of 9.2% in urban regions. This huge gap indicates uneven development and growth throughout the country. The average annual per capita GDP was $7,363 as of 2005.

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