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Dynamics of self-assessment of the family's material situation after the Russian invasion: February 2022 - May 2023

The press release was prepared by the Executive Director of KIIS Anton Hrushetskyi

 

From May 26 to June 5, 2023, the Kyiv International Institute of Sociology (KIIS) conducted its own all-Ukrainian public opinion survey "Omnibus". Bythemethodofcomputer-assistedtelephoneinterviews(CATI) based on a random sample of mobile phone numbers (with random generation of phone numbers and subsequent statistical weighting), 2,013 respondents living in all regions of Ukraine (except the Autonomous Republic of Crimea) were interviewed. The survey was conducted with adult (aged 18 and older) citizens of Ukraine who, at the time of the survey, lived on the territory of Ukraine (within the boundaries controlled by the authorities of Ukraine until February 24, 2022). The sample did not include residents of territories that were not temporarily controlled by the authorities of Ukraine until February 24, 2022 (AR of Crimea, the city of Sevastopol, certain districts of the Donetsk and Luhansk oblasts), and the survey was not conducted with citizens who left the country after February 24, 2022.

Formally, under normal circumstances, the statistical error of such a sample (with a probability of 0.95 and taking into account the design effect of 1.1) did not exceed 2.4% for indicators close to 50%, 2.1% for indicators close to 25%, 1.5% - for indicators close to 10%, 1.1% - for indicators close to 5%.

Under conditions of war, in addition to the specified formal error, a certain systematic deviation is added. In particular, if in May 2022, among all the respondents we interviewed, 2.5-4% lived in the territories occupied after February 24 (and this corresponded to the percentage of those who live there, because the generation of telephone numbers was random), now due to the occupiers turning off the telephone connection, not a single respondent who currently lives in occupied settlements was included in the sample (along with this, out of a total of 2013 respondents, 70 respondents lived in a settlement that is currently occupied until February 24, 2022). It is important to note that although the views of the respondents who lived in the occupation were somewhat different, the general trends were quite similar. That is, the impossibility of interviewing such respondents does not significantly affect the quality of the results. There are other factors that can affect the quality of results in "wartime" conditions (see Annex 2).

In general, we believe that the obtained results are still highly representative and allow for a fairly reliable analysis of public moods of the population.

 

 

Dynamics of self-assessment of the financial situation of the family

 

Since 1994, KIIS regularly asks the question "Which of these statements most accurately corresponds to the financial situation of your family?" with possible options:

 

1 – We don't even have enough money for food

2 – We have enough money for food, but it is already difficult to buy clothes

3 – We have enough money for food, clothes and can save a little, but not enough to buy expensive things (such as a fridge or a TV)

4 – We can afford to buy some expensive things (such as a TV or a fridge)

5 – We can afford to buy anything we want

 

The conducted experiments showed that the answers to this question are correlated with more complex methods of assessing the well-being of the population, that is, this question, especially in the context of tracking dynamics, is a fairly reliable tool. In particular, the dynamics of changes in self-assessment of well-being over the previous years coincided with the dynamics of well-being according to the World Bank methodology.  ssessment of whether there is enough or not enough money, and, let's say, the percentage of those who did not have enough for food, according to this indicator, has always been higher than according to the data of the World Bank, because the World Bank focuses on the number of calories needed to maintain life, and people give an estimate of whether they can maintain their usual diet. But this indicator is not completely subjective, because we ask about certain facts from the life of the respondent. It is somewhere in the middle between an objective and a subjective indicator.

Objectively, the financial situation of Ukrainians deteriorated greatly after the start of the war. A recent KIIS survey shows that 64% of Ukrainians experience a decrease in income, and 27% lost their jobs as a result of the invasion, and a significant number lost property and housing[1].  What is the dynamics of Ukrainians' self-assessments of well-being?

Graph 1 below compares responses from respondents in February 2022 (before the invasion) with responses in May 2022, December 2022, May 2023. For convenience, we will consider option 1 as "very low" financial position, option 2 as "low", 3 as "average", 4 and 5 together as "high".

As can be seen, the population's self-assessment of its well-being practically did not change after the Russian invasion and remains at an approximately similar level. In particular, the share of respondents with a very low financial situation was 9% before the invasion, and as of May 2023 it is 7%. However, it should be taken into account that there are still 33% of respondents with "low" well-being, i.e in general, currently in Ukraine 39% have "very low" or "low" well-being (before the invasion, the similar indicator was 41%).

The share of people with "average" well-being in the period between February 2022 and May 2023 was quite stable at the level of 35-36%.

The share of people with "high" well-being was 22% before the invasion, after the invasion it dropped to 16-17%, but as of May 2023 it had returned to the level of 23%.

Despite the objective decrease in the incomes of two-thirds of the population of Ukraine, self-assessments of well-being have hardly changed, because people's demands have significantly decreased during the war, they are more often satisfied with what they have and believe that they have enough for food or clothing even with a significant decrease in income.

 

Graph 1. Level of the family's financial situation

 

 

In the table below, the level of affluence is given for certain demographic categories of the population. Thus, women assess their situation worse (45% have "low" or "very low" affluence compared to 32% of men; the difference is primarily for persons aged 40 and older), older respondents (the share of those with "low" / "very low" affluence increases from 18% among 18-29 year olds to 61% among 70+ year olds), residents of the South and East (if in the West and in the Center 34% and 37% have "low" / "very low" affluence, then in the South and East - 44% and 52%), respondents without higher education (if among respondents with higher education 29% have "low" / "very low" affluence, then among those with secondary special education – 50%, among those with complete secondary or lower education – 44%).

 

Table 1. Level of the family's financial situation among certain demographic categories

100% in a row Very low Low Average High Refusal
Gender          
Man 4 27 38 28 3
Woman 8 37 34 18 2
Age          
18-29 years 1 17 43 39 1
30-39 years 4 27 39 26 3
40-49 years 5 34 36 22 2
50-59 years 8 30 43 18 1
60-69 years 11 42 29 15 3
70+ years 12 49 21 11 7
Non-IDPs or IDPs          
non-IDPs 6 32 36 23 3
IDPs 8 33 37 20 3
Region where currently live          
West 6 28 35 29 2
Center 6 32 37 22 4
South 7 36 37 18 2
East 10 41 27 18 3
Type of settlement where currently live          
Village 6 33 37 20 3
UTS / city up to 20 thousand 8 36 36 18 3
City 20-99 thousand 10 36 35 17 2
City 100-499 thousand 6 27 36 27 3
A city of 500,000 or more 4 32 34 27 2
Education          
Complete secondary or lower 10 34 32 21 3
Secondary special or professional-technical 9 42 34 14 2
Higher 4 25 39 30 3

 

 


 

A. Hrushetskyi, comments on the survey results:

 

The population's self-assessment of its financial situation is an important measure of stability, since Russia does not give up the idea of "organizing" a humanitarian catastrophe and socio-economic collapse in Ukraine in order to force a capitulation.

However, despite a significant decrease in the level of income and an increase in the level of unemployment, the general self-assessment of the family's situation, as we can see, remains at the same level as before the invasion. Thanks to their own physical and emotional resources and the will to Victory, as well as thanks to the powerful support of our Western friends, Ukrainians demonstrate resilience in enduring the difficulties of today in order to achieve the dream goal of expelling the enemies, rebuilding Ukraine and fully joining the European family.

 

           

Annex 1. Formulation of questions from the questionnaire

 

Please tell, which of the statements that I am going to read now most accurately corresponds to the financial situation of your family?

 (% among all respondents)

100% in a column Region: where live now Ukraine as a whole West[2] Center South East
We don't even have enough money for food 7 6 6 7 10
We have enough money for food, but it is already difficult to buy clothes 33 28 32 36 41
We have enough money for food and clothes and we can save a little, but not enough to buy expensive things (such as a fridge or a TV) 36 35 37 37 27
We can afford to buy some expensive things (such as a TV or a fridge) 18 24 17 15 13
We can afford to buy anything we want 4 5 5 3 5
DIFFICULT TO SAY 2 2 2 1 2
REFUSAL TO ANSWER 1 0 2 1 1

 

 

Annex 2. Methodological comments on the representativeness of telephone surveys conducted during the war

 

Even before the full-scale Russian invasion on February 24, 2022, there were a number of factors that negatively affected the representativeness of the polls (for example, the absence of a census for more than 20 years). A full-scale war, of course, greatly affects representativeness and complicates the work of sociologists, but does not make it impossible. Access to reliable data on the state of public moods remains relevant both for Ukrainians themselves and for our foreign partners (who, as the events of recent months have shown, often underestimated and did not understand Ukraine and Ukrainians).

At the same time, in order to maintain objectivity, it is necessary to understand what limitations the war imposes on the conduct of sociological surveys. First of all, we pay attention to large-scale population movements. As of May, 2023, the UN estimates the number of Ukrainian refugees at almost 8.3 million. Obviously, due to various reasons, it is difficult to consider these data unequivocally accurate, but in general, the quite significant scale of departure from the country is understandable. There is no exact data on how many of them are adult citizens, but, most likely, it is about half. Among about 30 million adult citizens (estimated at the time of the full-scale invasion), it can be roughly estimated that about 15-20% have left the country, and it is impossible to reliably survey these citizens using telephone interviews. Even more citizens have become internally displaced persons, but they have a much smaller impact on the quality of telephone surveys, since almost all of these citizens have mobile phones and are reachable to participate in the survey (in fact, 16% of the respondents of this survey are IDPs).

Another important problem is the accessibility for the survey of the population of the territories that were occupied after February 24, 2022, due to the conduct of intensive military operations or due to interruptions in telephone communication. Now there is practically no connection. In May 2022, 2.5-4% of respondents lived in these territories, now the sample does not include a single respondent who currently lives in an occupied settlement (together with this, out of a total of 2013 respondents, 70 respondents lived in a settlement that is currently occupied until February 24, 2022; now these respondents live in one of the settlements on the territory controlled by the Government of Ukraine). According to our estimates, the territories that were occupied by Russia as of the beginning of September 2022 (occupied after February 24, 2022) accounted for about 9% of the total adult population. Taking into account the mass exodus of the population from these territories (most likely, we are talking about at least half of the population), as well as the fact that significant territories of Kharkiv and Kherson regions were liberated from this period, we estimate that no more than 3-5% of the total adult population of Ukraine were unavailable due to communication problems.

In our opinion, a more significant impact on representativeness can be either a generally lower willingness of citizens with "pro-Russian" attitudes to participate in surveys, or the insincerity of those who did take part in the survey (taking into account the obvious facts and prevailing opinions in the media regarding the Russian invasion , some citizens will not want to say what they really think "in public"). If to talk about the general willingness of respondents to participate in the survey, then in recent surveys we see either the same indicators or somewhat lower (although it should be borne in mind that the lower willingness to participate of "pro-Russian" citizens can be compensated by the higher willingness to participate of "pro-Ukrainian"-minded citizens).

We conducted a methodical experiment in May, which shows that the citizens who are currently participating in the surveys in terms of demographic characteristics and meaningful attitudes are close to those who participated in the surveys until February 24, 2022. Preliminarily, we see some shift in the direction of "pro-Ukrainian"-minded citizens, which is reflected in up to 4-6% deviations for individual questions (in the direction of more frequent selection of answers that correspond to the "pro-Ukrainian" interpretation of events). In our opinion, in the current conditions, this is a rather optimistic indicator.

However, this experiment does nnot give an answer as to how sincere the respondents are now in their answers. To assess the sincerity of responses to sensitive questions, in July we conducted another experiment using the "imagined acquaintance" method. The results showed that the respondents generally answered the survey questions honestly. That is, we have reason to say that during the interview, the respondents really answer our questions sincerely.

 



[1] Ukraine's support for NATO and the demand for inclusive democracy reach record high levels // https://kiis.com.ua/?lang=ukr&cat=reports&id=1255&page=1

[2] The composition of the macroregions is as follows: Western macroregion – Volyn, Rivne, Lviv, Ivano-Frankivsk, Ternopil, Zakarpattia, Khmelnytskyi, Chernivtsi oblasts; Central macroregion – Vinnytsia, Zhytomyr, Sumy, Chernihiv, Poltava, Kirovohrad, Cherkasy, Kyiv oblasts, Kyiv city, Southern macroregion – Dnipropetrovsk, Zaporizhzhia, Mykolaiv, Kherson, Odesa oblasts, Eastern macroregion – Donetsk, Luhansk and Kharkiv oblasts.


4.7.2023
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