Only 5% of Georgian population is in the upper social-economic class

IPM has been working on finding out social-economic profile of our society for over ten years. The company has always tried to “find” the middle class as the main motive power and main barn of modern society. The fact that thorough identification of the middle class by Eastern standards has been impossible in Georgia up to now, only proves that our society is not successful from social-economic point of view.

There are various methods of stratification of social-economic level in the world, though the main aim of each of the methods is to define the volume of the upper, middle and lower levels.

In order to fulfill the task, company IPM used the model of Social-Economic Status (SES). According to SES model, the society is divided into three levels: 1. Upper social class that can afford cars, flats, take out loans and have various, healthy and rich nutrition 2. Middle social class that makes both ends meet by the income, has material recourses for nutrition, but cannot afford expensive purchases; 3. Lower social class that has problems with nutrition; they do not have enough income for buying the food of necessary amount and are constantly waiting for unexpected problem. Consequently, the first class belongs to the rich class, the second one is a middle class and the third one belongs to the poor class. In SES model, status is defined by three variables of ongoing economic situation – income, education and employment. Consequently, the higher education level a person has, is employed and has good income, the higher his/her social class is.

The model was worked out on the bases of the results of a quantitative research among 800 grown-up respondents. The survey was done in August-September, 2014. The aim of the experiment was to define social-economic status of the respondents towards their income on the bases of their attitude according to above-mentioned SES model.

Condition in Georgia from this point is as follows: Upper social class: 5.2%; middle social class: 28.8%; lower social class: 66%.

People who are more aware of social-economic classification practice or the issues of social stratification, will realize that upper social-economic class in Georgia is closest to the middle class of Eastern standards. The class is characterized by hopes, socialization, political activities, they have citizenship responsibility. However, unfortunately, 66% of Georgian population is the social circle that lives in stressful environment in everyday regime, does not have potential and recourses to take part in the country’s development, is indifferent towards such principle policies issues like relationship with Russia and leads anti-national interests quite frequently.
(IPM)