Abstract:
For a social scientist interested in poverty in Ukraine, the World Bank would be one of the first reference
points, since it is an important source of aggregate data, ranging from GDP per capita and the
percentage of households below the poverty line, to the main determinants of poverty (such as age, gender,
family composition, education, health, employment or geographical location). Nevertheless, while being
helpful for social scientists as a starting point in their poverty research, the nature and the aim of World
Bank's reports also have limitations that need to be taken into account. This paper explores the «strong»
and the «weak» sides of these reports from a perspective of their potential use by social scientists. In par¬
ticular, attention is drawn to such issues as methology, data analysis and possible biases in explaining
statistical results.
