Over the last two decades, the profile of the poor has been evolving in Georgia, but the poverty level has
remained consistently high. If the official subsistence minimum is taken as the poverty line, slightly more than
two-fifths of the population is poor according to the latest estimations. Arguably, persisting high poverty levels
can be explained by jobless economic growth and low agricultural productivity. The institutionalisation of
a targeted social assistance scheme has yet to demonstrate its efficacy. Instead of using perverse estimates of
relative poverty, the government should acknowledge deprivation as the major challenge for the country and
must more eagerly attempt to cure its root causes—inappropriate human capital and narrow labour markets.