KYIV, Oct
17 - Eighty percent of Ukraine’s population believes their material situation
to be unsatisfactory, according to the results of a poll entitled "Your Opinion:
September 2000," conducted by the Social Monitoring Center, Ukrainian News reported.
According to the results of the poll, 40 percent of respondents said that they
"barely make ends meet" and lack sufficient money to buy the basic necessary
products.
40 percent of respondents said they can afford to eat and buy inexpensive goods, 16 percent said that they usually have enough to live on, but cannot afford to buy such durable goods as refrigerators and televisions, 3 percent described their financial situation as secure, while only 0.2 percent said they can buy virtually everything they want.
In the western and eastern regions of Ukraine, as well as in the Crimea, no respondents considered their financial situation secure.
The number of those who said that the amounts of money they receive are insufficient to buy the basic foodstuffs live in towns with populations under 100,000 (40 percent of respondents) and in rural areas (47 percent).
The same poll showed that fifty percent of Ukraine’s population believes that a crisis in the fuel and energy sector is a factor capable of destabilizing the sociopolitical situation in the country in the next few months, while 48 percent of the population believes that the sociopolitical situation in the country may worsen significantly in the next few months.
According to the poll, 72 percent of the population sees the main reason for instability in Ukraine’s society as the battle among powerful elite for their own interests.
Nine percent of respondents believes that nothing can influence stability in Ukraine’s society, according to the poll results.
The poll was conducted in all regions of Ukraine. A total of 2,003 people from the age of 18 were polled. The standard deviation was 1.3-2.2 percent.
Ukrainian News
17 Oct 2000