Data for Development - Armenia

What's the situation ?

Armenia's population faces challenges of depopulation and ageing. Its Government needs support to assess and analyze these trends and other aspects of its population dynamics in order to develop the policies which would best address them.
The political and economic upheavals which followed Armenia's independence caused many people to migrate. After the collapse of the Soviet Union, Armenia suffered a deep economic crisis, which was exacerbated by the 1988 earthquake, armed conflict, the presence of thousands of refugees and an energy crisis. Armenia has been affected with sharp global downturn as world financial crisis has a negative impact on labor market and employment rate in Armenia. Particularly, as a result of crisis remittances flows and overall economic activities have slowed down and reverse migration has increased.   
The number of de jure population since 1993 (according to the recalculated data of de jure population based on the Population census results) has had trends of reduction which fell down from 3463.7 to 3210.3 thousand persons at the beginning of 2003. However, since the beginning of 2004 an increase of de jure population number has been recorded which grew annually by 0.1% on average and by 0.2% in 2007. The number of de jure population of the republic comprised 3230.1 thousand people as of the beginning of 2008, recording an increase by 7.2 thousand compared to the same period of the previous year.
About 800.000 persons left the country since during 1991-1998.1 Most of those who left were economically active people of reproductive age. The current rate of new births is not enough to make up for this large wave of migration. According to the Sample Survey on External and Internal Migration conducted in 2007 by PDS/UNFPA and NSS of RA during 2002-2007 around 300.000 persons were involved in external migration processes.
At the same time, with so many young people migrating, the proportion of elderly people in Armenia's population has risen from 9.1 to 12 percent in the last 20 years. The elderly are greatly affected by poverty and they often lack of access to basic social services. The consequences of this rapid aging of the population in Armenia have not been fully assessed and analyzed. In order to study the family relationships between the spouses of 50 years of age and over, their living conditions, well-being, employment, retirement and financial security rates the nationally representative Population Ageing Sample Survey has been conducted in Armenia in 2008 by UNFPA and UN DESA support. According to the results of the mentioned survey the households having members above 50 comprise 2/3 of the overall number of households in Armenia. The traditional culture of caring for the old age people, which distinguished the Armenian society and the Armenian family, has considerably degraded. Elderly population needs increasing involvement in societal affairs of the community and their inter-personal relationships. It is noteworthy that around half of population aged 50+ has an inferiority complex in the society. Moreover, the prevailing majority of the men and women aged 50+ believe that the state should be responsible for taking care of the elderly.

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