ECONOMIC AND MATHEMATICAL ANALYSIS OF UKRAINIAN POPULATION POVERTY

Abstract

The article examines the poverty of the Ukrainian population and reveals its main components. The purpose of the article is to conduct an economic, mathematical and statistical analysis of the Ukrainian poverty level and to identify the city of Ukraine in terms of poverty in the world. The methods of analysis, generalization, comparison, modeling and forecasting, correlation analysis, clustering were used in the research. The current state of poverty is considered, a categorical scheme of the poverty causes is formed. Attention is paid to the analysis of social and economic indicators that reflect the state of poverty in Ukraine. They demonstrate the main problems in overcoming poverty and positive trends. Thus, the main directions and methods of improving the economic condition and quality of population’ life are identified. The authors clustered one hundred countries of the world on a set of features related to the identified system of factors influencing the level of Ukrainian population’s poverty. Three homogeneous clusters on the chosen set of factors are revealed. To clarify the current trends and the current state of the selected indicators in Ukraine, a correlation analysis was conducted at two stages: the first one for the entire period (2010-2019), and then for the last 6 years (2014-2019) since the beginning of the crisis in 2014. Correlation analysis has revealed recent changes in the country's development trends. With increasing growth the rates of real wages, the population with per capita equivalent total income per month, below the statutory subsistence level tends to decrease. Recently, however, real wage growth has been declining, which may lead to an even larger share of the population with unacceptably low incomes in the near future. The situation with higher education is also critical. Earlier the expenditures on higher education were allocated in proportion to the total expenditures on education, but now there is a tendency to reduce the expenditures on higher education against the background of even a partial increase in expenditures on education as a whole. Recently, there have been some shifts in the stabilization of the poverty situation in Ukraine with slight fluctuations towards the reduction or increase of the poverty rate depending on the measurement criterion. However, there are still a large number of unresolved issues that require further research, and as a result, given the difficult socio-economic and political situation in Ukraine, poverty remains consistently high. Key words: poverty, causes of poverty, subsistence level, decile coefficient, income stratification, corruption perception index, nominal and real wages, clustering, differentiation.