Determinants of Poverty Perceptions in Uzbekistan: A Mixed-Methods Approach

This study investigates perceptions of poverty and its underlying determinants among a purposively sampled population of social-benefit recipients in Uzbekistan. For this purpose, a survey was conducted with 1949 respondents who receive social benefits. The collected data were analyzed using an exploratory sequential mixed-methods approach. Initially, thematic analysis was conducted to identify perceptions of poverty. The output of the thematic analysis was the emergence of nine themes that illustrate the characteristics of individualistic, structural, fatalistic, and cultural attributions of poverty perceptions. Based on the output of the thematic analysis, multinomial logistic regression was conducted. The selection of the base category was based on both the theoretical framework and survey output. The regression results indicated that age, regional poverty cluster and place of residence were the most statistically significant demographic factors influencing perceptions of poverty. Among the monetary variables, personal income demonstrated the strongest explanatory power. Overall, the findings suggest that, within this sampled population, perceptions of poverty are predominantly shaped by individualistic attributions rather than structural, fatalistic or cultural ones. However, these results should be considered with caution as they may reflect internalized poverty stigma.