Picture: An Open Air Market in Kharkiv from 2000. Everyone lays their goods on the sidewalk.

I know this is a very basic question. But I forgot poverty isn't always defined by lack of money. I assume others folks fall into this thinking too.

try this definition [of poverty] from Benjamin I. Page and James R. Simmons, political scientists at Northwestern University and the University of Wisconsin, Oshkosh, respectively

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"A person deprived of things that everyone around him has is likely to suffer a sense of inadequacy, a loss of dignity and self-respect."

From: How to Define Poverty? Let Us Count the Ways

What does poverty mean to Ukrainian citizens? How is their society impacted by it? A lot.....

About 2% of Ukrainian children are in the orphanage system (125,000 / 6,581,606)


Children enter the Ukrainian orphanage system for the same reasons they enter American foster care; abuse and neglect.


Ukrainian children also enter the orphanage system because they are economic orphans. No one knows how many there are. These children are not typically available for adoption unless:

• Child was abandoned and therefore parents are unknown.



• Parents voluntarily gave up their parental rights.

Some parents use the orphanage system to help raise their children. They cannot afford to fed or house the children. Parents, grandparents, siblings and other family members visit their children in the orphanage.


My daughter Natasha was adopted from Ukraine at 3.5 years of age. Her orphanage groupa had 20 kids. She was the only child available for adoption.

What is poverty?

Human poverty, says the report, is a lack of access to the opportunities available to other members of society as a result of social, political or other restraints or barriers.

In Ukraine, the majority of the population perceive themselves as poor, and in fact have relatively low incomes. The "near poor," the 20 percent of the population above the poverty line applied in the Poverty Report have total (cash and non-cash) incomes barely higher than those defined as poor.

Given the lack of savings or other financial resources among this group, any change in current benefit structures or change in life-course, such as illness, accident or even the birth of a child could push them into poverty.

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Indications of poverty in Ukraine: Between 1990 and 1999, the consumption of meat, dairy products, eggs, fish and fruits all fell by roughly 50 percent, while only bread consumption rose above its pre-transition level.

Much of the Ukrainian population now subsists on a diet consisting almost exclusively of carbohydrates and vegetables. The alarming rise in cases of tuberculosis or of iron-deficiency anemia in pregnant women and new mothers are indications of poor diet and nutritional insufficiency which already threaten the health of the next generation.


From: Global Volunteers: Poverty In Ukraine

And word about access to health care.....

Ukraine where 88 percent of all families share this predicament [claimed to be unable to afford even basic care].

From: Healthcare in Eastern Europe

Most orphanages, even though they are state run, greatly struggle providing health care too.



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