Poverty Correlates and Indicator-Based Targeting in Eastern Europe and the Former Soviet Union 1942. Social protection systems in the transition economies have been inadequate to meet the challenges of transition, being both costly and poorly targeted. They find striking differences between the post-Soviet and Eastern European experiences with poverty and targeting.
Rural poverty is greater than urban poverty.
There is a gender and age dimension to poverty in some countries. In Poland the pension system has adequate reach. Only those with special skills or university education escape poverty in great numbers, thanks to the demand for their skills from the newly emerging private sector. The poverty gap is remarkably uniform in Eastern European countries, especially Hungary and Poland, suggesting that social safety nets have prevented the emergence of deep pockets of poverty. This is much less true in the former Soviet Union, where those with the highest poverty rate also have the largest poverty gap.