In the fourth quarter of 2025, 4.8% of Kazakhstan’s population — or 988.2 thousand people from 172.7 thousand households — had incomes below the subsistence minimum (around 58.8 thousand tenge per capita per month). Over the year, the number of such individuals increased by 2%.
At the regional level, the situation is highly uneven. In 9 out of 20 regions, the poverty rate exceeded the national average. Turkestan Region remained the worst performer, with the share of low-income population reaching 8.4%, followed by Mangystau Region at 7.9%.
Particular concern is driven by the sharp increase in the share of the population with incomes below the cost of the food basket — an indicator of extreme poverty. In the fourth quarter of 2025, this share rose to 0.3%, tripling compared to the same period of the previous year. The most critical situation was recorded in Ulytau Region, where the indicator reached 3% — ten times higher than the national average. Elevated levels were also observed in Karaganda Region (1.3%) and Akmola Region (1%).
Large families remain the most vulnerable group. Among households with five or more members, the share of the population with incomes below the subsistence minimum reached 9.1% — 3.5 times higher than among four-person households (2.6%) and ten times higher than among three-person households (0.9%). Extreme poverty is also most prevalent in large families: 0.4% of their members have incomes below the cost of the food basket, while in smaller households this indicator is close to zero. It should be noted that these figures reflect only official data, and the real situation may be significantly more severe.
Large families are therefore at the highest risk: their vulnerability to low income is nearly 75 times greater compared to single-person households. A similar pattern is observed for extreme poverty: the larger the household, the higher the likelihood of falling below the food basket threshold. This directly indicates that current support measures for large families are not achieving their intended effect.
