NUR-SULTAN – More than half of the respondents said the Western sanctions against Russia had a significant impact on the lives of Kazakh people, according to the recent survey released by the BISAM Central Asia Center for Sociological and Marketing Research.
The survey was conducted in Almaty, Nur-Sultan, Shymkent, Aktobe, Karaganda, Kostanay, Taraz, and Ust-Kamenogorsk in May. Photo credit: inform.kz
The survey was conducted in Almaty, Nur-Sultan, Shymkent, Aktobe, Karaganda, Kostanay, Taraz, and Ust-Kamenogorsk in May. The center interviewed 1,000 respondents aged 18-65.
“Only 5 percent of people said the sanctions did not affect their lives at all. Less than 30 percent of people believe that sanctions have affected their lives but not to a great extent,” reads the report.
The impact of sanctions depends on respondents’ financial situation, explained the experts. The persons in poverty have suffered the most. Nearly three-quarters of respondents feel the direct impact of sanctions among the low-income group. Approximately half of the people do not believe in the significant influence of sanctions in the middle-income group. Only a third of the respondents in the high-income group feel the effects of sanctions.
The assessment of the consequences of sanctions is significantly less among youngsters than old people. Fifty percent of respondents aged 18-35 feel the strong consequences of sanctions on the country’s economy, while 57 percent of respondents aged 46-55 and 65 percent of respondents aged 56-65 share the same opinion.
Women assess the consequences of sanctions as ‘very strong’ (23.7 percent) or ‘quite strong’ (33 percent) compared to men (19.4 percent and 28.4 percent, respectively). Those involved in household chores felt the effects of sanctions to a greater extent.
Eighty-three percent of people noted rising prices for food products and 67 percent for non-food items. A small, but quite significant proportion of respondents observed the changes in the labor market, lifestyle, and social and cultural activities in connection to sanctions.
