Growth, Crises, and COVID‐19: Tracking Poverty Changes in Turkey From 2003 to 2021

Abstract

ABSTRACTTurkey has experienced periods of high growth as well as important economic, political, and health crises over the last two decades. Based on two nationally representative surveys conducted yearly between 2003 and 2021, this study tracks changes in poverty indices and in the factors associated with poverty during this period. The results show a rapid decrease in poverty at the beginning of the period, followed by a slower reduction in poverty between 2008 and 2016. Poverty rates remained stable between 2016 and 2020. However, poverty decreased again in 2021 during the COVID‐19 pandemic, contrary to what happened in most countries. These results are robust to alternative choices in terms of poverty lines and measurement methods, although they may be affected by inflation measurement after 2020. While poverty remained higher in some parts of Anatolia throughout the period, some regions with initially high poverty rates (e.g., West Black Sea) showed a rapid decrease in poverty. Household size, education, and farming were important predictors of poverty in 2005, but their importance decreased as explanatory factors over the period. Overall, the results suggest that the important poverty reduction that occurred in the 2000s in Turkey slowed down in recent years, but that interventions aimed at mitigating the economic effects of the Covid‐19 pandemic may have mitigated its impacts on poverty outcomes.