Poverty and Health indicators

By 1999 the rural poverty rate was 60%, according to Kyrgyzstan's National Poverty Reduction Strategy, 2003–2005 (April 2004, http://poverty2.forumone.com/files/Kyrgyz_PRSP.pdf), and the urban rate was 42.4%. In 2001 the numbers had declined to 51% for rural dwellers but had risen to 47.6% for those in urban areas. As in much of the rest of the world, poverty in Kyrgyzstan is heavily concentrated in rural regions. While 65.3% of the total Kyrgyzstani population lives in rural areas, 70% of the poor are rural dwellers. The overall rate of extreme poverty in 2001 was 13.5%. For those in rural regions the extreme poverty rate dropped between 2000 and 2001, from 20.5% to 15.6%, as did the urban regions rate, from 12.7 to 9.6%.

According to the UN Human Development Program's "Country Sheet: Kyrgyzstan" (2006, http://hdr.undp.org/statistics/data/countries.cfm?c=KGZ), Kyrgyzstan's literacy rate and primary school enrollment are high: 98.7% of adults were literate in 2002, and 82% of children were enrolled in primary, secondary, and tertiary schools. According to the World Health Organization (2006, http://www.who.int/countries/kgz/en/), in 2004 life expectancy was fifty-nine years for men and sixty-seven for women. The healthy life expectancy at birth was 52.2 years for men and 58.4 years for women in 2002. In 2004 the under-five child mortality was seventy-two per 1,000 live births for boys and sixty-three per 1,000 for girls. The average per capita GDP in 2005 was $1,751. In 2003 Kyrgyzstan ranked 109 out of 177 countries on the UN's Human Development Index.

Like Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan has a growing presence in the international drug trade and, consequently, an increasing number of intravenous drug users and HIV cases. In fact, according to the British nongovernmental organization One World UK (2006, http://uk.oneworld. net/guides/kyrgyzstan/development), unofficial sources estimate that there may be as many as 6,000 cases of HIV, most unreported, in the country. Additionally, Kyrgyzstan has high rates of deaths from circulatory and respiratory diseases, and incidences of tuberculosis, syphilis, and malaria have increased since the 1990s.

Tajikistan

After independence in 1991, Tajikistan fell into a civil war that lasted from 1992 to 1994. The conflict seriously deteriorated conditions throughout the country, which has not entirely recovered as of 2006. The World Bank reports in Republic of Tajikistan Poverty Assessment Update (January 6, 2005, http://www.untj.org/files/reports/Tajikistan%20Poverty%20Assessment%20Update.pdf) that Tajikistan is the poorest of the former Soviet republics, indeed, one of the poorest countries in the world, with 64% of its population living on less than $2.15 a day in 2003. This is down substantially from 81% in 1999. The rate of extreme poverty (less than $1.08 a day) in 2003 was 18%, down from 36% in 1999. In 2002 the average gross national income per capita was less than $200, despite economic growth averaging 8% since 2000. Tajikistan does not have a national poverty line, so all calculations are based on the international lines (adjusted to $1.08 and $2.15 per day based on 2000 purchasing power parity).

The UNDP's Investing in Sustainable Development: Millennium Development Goals Needs Assessment (May 2005, http://www.undp.tj/home/MDG_NA_Full_Eng.pdf) for Tajikistan reports that steady economic growth and increased income and consumption have not really improved living standards for most Tajiks, even though extreme poverty has decreased by as much as fifty-five percentage points in some provincial regions since 1999.

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