The World Bank, in collaboration with the Kyiv International Institute of Sociology, conducts the Listening to Ukraine Household Phone Surveys (L2Ukr) to provide a picture of (1) how Russia's invasion is impacting the well-being of ordinary Ukrainians and (2) how the government's response, enabled by external support, has helped citizens to cope and carry on with their lives amidst the war.
Methodology
The L2Ukr survey involves phone interviews of between 1,500 and 2,000 households every month, initially drawing from a representative sample of the Ukrainian population in 2021 and using random digital dialing to replace households in the sample since then. This approach has made it possible to cover all parts of Ukraine currently under the government’s control. Thus the survey includes those respondents from regions with active hostilities who remain accessible by phone, although the number of respondents and coverage in Donetsk and Kherson is small. The results can be broken down with reasonable confidence by rural and urban areas and by region when the data is pooled over several rounds except for territories not currently under the government’s control where survey coverage is limited. The same households are tracked over time until they drop out, upon which they are replaced by other randomly assigned households.
Key Findings
Key findings from the survey results from April to December 2023 are discussed in detail in this note, including:
The L2Ukr survey reveals that Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has increased poverty, primarily due to the loss of jobs and labor income.
- Poverty, measured according to national standards, is projected to have increased by 1.8 million people among the population remaining in Ukraine in 2023, compared to 2020. Approximately one quarter of Ukrainians, did not have enough money to buy food at some point in June 2023.
- Declining employment drove the increase in poverty, as more than a fifth of adults employed before the war reported losing their jobs.
- Income from social transfers such as old-age pensions and social assistance including payments to Internally Displaced Persons (IDPs) accounted for just more than half of household incomes in 2023 compared to a fifth in 2021, as income from work became more uncertain and a considerable number of working-age adults migrated.
- Sustained external financial support from donors kept old-age pensions and social assistance payments flowing, thus partly offsetting the impact of job losses on poverty. Also, a rebound in economic growth in 2023, accompanied by recovering wages and slowing inflation, helped improve food security in the second half of 2023.
- Without continuous social transfers, especially pension payments to the elderly, almost three million more Ukrainians would have been poor.
Significant external funding has helped the government substantially mitigate the welfare impacts of the war.
- Most services have kept running, even in areas under active hostilities. Between 85% and 92 % of health clinics were fully operational in each month in 2023, and a minimum of 89% of children aged 6–18 were enrolled in school – though in areas under active hostilities, 72 % of students were still instructed through full-time remote learning in the fourth quarter of 2023.
- 97% of old-age pensions and 85% of social assistance transfers continued to be paid on time every month.
- Benefits for Internally Displaced Persons reached the most vulnerable among them.
This work was supported by the Multi-Donor Trust Funds for Co-financing of the Public Expenditures for Administrative Capacity Endurance (PEACE) in Ukraine Project, whose donors include Belgium, Finland, Germany, Iceland, Ireland, Japan, Spain, Switzerland, and the US.