Quality of life and social exclusion in rural Southern, Central and Eastern Europe and the CIS

Abstract

This article will focus on household access to essential social services provision (in particular examining access to public utilities) in countries of Southern, Central and Eastern Europe (SEE/CEE) and the Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS). The article uses original household data from two rounds of the Life in Transition Survey (LiTS) of the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development (EBRD) and the World Bank, conducted in 2006 and 2010, and from the Social Exclusion Survey, which the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) conducted in late 2009. We will focus our analysis on differentiation according to the locality where households were residing, in rural and urban areas. Large differences in access to essential public utilities (such as piped tap water, sewerage systems, telephone and internet) are shown between urban and rural areas, combined with marked inequality within rural areas. In addition, issues of social exclusion (including access to social services) and life satisfaction are investigated. While objective gaps in access are wide, subjective satisfaction with the quality of life is still higher in rural areas, including among those who are found to be socially excluded, indicating greater resilience of the rural population.

Acknowledgement

This article has benefited from language editing by Martha Jane Robbins.

Notes

^1. The first author of this article was the leader of the writing team that prepared substantial parts of the report. The third author did most of the data analysis and was the designer of the household surveys.

^2. Synovate (2006) acknowledges that the data on expenditure might not be extremely accurate: ‘Some respondents experienced problems in calculating household expenditure … and had to consult with other family members (usually the partner or spouse) to get accurate estimates. In the analysis of the results, the seasonality of the expenses (for this survey the data were for the same season) may need to be taken into account’ (Synovate was the company carrying out the surveys for the EBRD and the World Bank).

^3. ERBD (2007, 2011) in the main report use averages for the three sub-regions (SEE, CEE and CIS+M).

^4. In this article we use the concept of social exclusion as ‘Social exclusion deprives people of the opportunity to participate in economic, social and civic processes, and limits their ability to lead productive, creative lives in accordance with their needs and interests’ (UNDP 2011a, p. 1).

^5. Word Bank Development Indicators, 2011 database; http://data.worldbank.org/indicator accessed 3 June 2013.

^6. For more information on the sample selection see EBRD (2007) and EBRD (2011); for sample details see Table 1.

^7. All differences were means-tested and found significant at 1% confidence level.

^8. This latter number is difficult to understand.

^9. These data are substantially lower than those reported in the UNDP 2009 survey, although telephone access is expected to have grown very fast.