Monitoring Living Conditions in Ukraine: Fall 2025 Update
Poverty and Inequality Remain Elevated
- Ukraine continues to experience high poverty and rising inequality in the fourth year of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. The estimated preliminary poverty rate for 2025 is 36.9%, remaining at similar levels as 2024 (37.0%) and significantly higher than pre-2022 rates.*
- Income inequality has worsened, with the Gini coefficient rising from 0.41 in 2023 to 0.50 in 2025, reflecting widening gaps between the poorest and wealthiest households.
- The leading cause of rising inequality is an uneven decline in labor incomes, with higher losses concentrated among those at the lower part of the income distribution. A decline in pensions in real terms, which affected poorer households more, further contributed to rising inequality between 2024 and 2025.
Vulnerable Groups Are Increasing
- About one-quarter of households now include at least one member who is an internally displaced person (IDP), a veteran, or someone with a disability due to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.
- 9.2% of households have at least one disabled household member due to injuries related to the current circumstances. 9.4% of Listening to Ukraine (L2UKR) respondents reported having at least one veteran in their households.
Labor Market Frictions and Skills Mismatches Persist
- Despite high labor demand in some sectors, unemployment has increased slightly, with 13.1% of working-age adults reporting job loss in 2025, up from 11.5% in 2023.
- Vulnerable groups face larger labor market barriers, and skills mismatches contribute to labor market frictions.
- Women continue to face significant barriers to employment, including increased care responsibilities, social norms, and regulatory shortfalls.
- Wages are rising rapidly in high-skilled sectors such as IT, finance, and defense, while low-skilled workers and vulnerable groups see stagnant or declining incomes. The share of households in the bottom 20% reporting labor income remains low, at 35% in 2025. In contrast, over 90% of households in the top 20% continue to earn labor income.
- Investments in the care economy and targeted labor market programs are needed to address persistent gender gaps and support job growth for vulnerable groups.
Regional and Spatial Inequalities Are Deepening
- The population and economy have shifted westward. Over the 2023–2025 period, oblasts with the highest rates of households earning wage incomes are in the western oblasts and Kyiv city. In contrast, regions under active hostilities report higher food insecurity and asset losses. Nearly half of households in targeted regions report damage to their homes or assets, compared to only 7% in the West.
- Focused regional labor market policies and geographic targeting will be crucial in the current context in Ukraine.
Social Support and Public Services Remain Essential
- A growing share of households, especially among the poorest, rely on public transfers and pensions. In Q3 2025, 72% of households with vulnerable members received public transfers, compared to 60% of other households.
- Disruptions in water and electricity supply remain common. 17.6% of households reported water supply issues in the past 30 days in Q3 2025.
- Access to medicines and healthcare is more difficult for vulnerable households. In Q3 2025, one-third of households with vulnerable members paid out of pocket for medical services received, compared with only one-quarter of households without any vulnerable members.
- Targeted support and adaptive social safety nets remain critical policy instruments in Ukraine in the current context.
Public Attitudes and Policy Priorities
- There is broad public support for measures to assist vulnerable groups, especially veterans and their families.
* World Bank estimated poverty rates are based on microsimulations using 2020 Household Living Conditions Survey (HLCS) and 2023/24/25 Listening to Ukraine surveys (L2UKR). In 2025, the World Bank estimates a preliminary poverty rate for part of the year at 36.9 percent. The 2025 preliminary poverty estimate uses the average actual minimum threshold of UAH 8,312, which is the average of months May–July 2025.