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Tajikistan
Standard of Living
Beginning in the late 1980s, the troubled state of the Soviet
economy in general led to shortages of consumer necessities in
Tajikistan, including flour, meat, sugar, and soap. In every year
from 1986 through 1989, the value of per capita consumption of
goods and services was substantially lower there than in any other
Soviet republic. The government in Dushanbe began rationing food
early in 1991, but Tajikistan's consumption of meat and dairy
products already had been the lowest in the Soviet Union for the
previous six years. In 1990 annual per capita meat consumption
was twenty-six kilograms in Tajikistan, compared with sixty-seven
kilograms for the Soviet Union as a whole. In the same year, annual
per capita milk consumption was 161 kilograms in Tajikistan, compared
with 358 kilograms for the Soviet Union as a whole.
The national consumer price index went up about 6,000 percent
in 1993 alone (see table 10, Appendix). In 1994 breadlines began
forming at Dushanbe's single bakery at five in the morning, and
the demand often exceeded the supply. Meanwhile, most state stores
stood empty as bazaars offered food at prohibitively high prices.
Such conditions worsened in the mid-1990s. Although at times bread
(whose price was still government subsidized), meat, rice, soap,
and other commodities were rationed, basic necessities often were
difficult to obtain. In 1995 a 150 percent increase in bread prices,
meant as a step toward price decontrol, had the side effect of
compounding the difficulty of maintaining an adequate diet. Fuel
deliveries in Dushanbe were irregular, and city apartments were
cold in the winter.
By the end of the Soviet era, the great majority of Tajikistan's
citizens had extremely low incomes even by Soviet standards. Industrial
wages ranked second lowest among the republics in 1990. The income
of peasants on collective farms was the lowest among all republics;
for those on state farms, it was the second to lowest. The situation
did not improve in the first post-Soviet years. At the end of
1994, the average monthly wage was 25,000 rubles, or US$7.30,
and wages often went unpaid for several months. The maximum weekly
wage was set at US$19.30 by a government policy that automatically
deposited any payment above that level in the recipient's bank
savings account.
By the 1980s, housing had become a serious problem, especially
in Dushanbe. The "Housing-93" project of that period promised
to provide accommodations by 1993 to families that were on the
waiting lists in 1988, but construction fell far behind. By 1990,
some 150,000 families were waiting to get an apartment in the
capital, a situation that contributed to the outbreak of riots
there in February of that year. The housing shortage in the northern
province of Leninobod was similarly acute.
Data as of March 1996
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