Monday, September 30, 2019

Young people are learning English in Georgia

A common sentiment when discussing foreign languages in Georgia is that young people know some English, older people know Russian, and those in between are mixed. Previous CRRC Georgia analysis from 2014 supported this claim, showing that knowledge of English was on the rise among young people. The 2019 survey on Knowledge and Attitudes towards the European Union in Georgia which CRRC Georgia carried out for Europe Foundation suggests that this trend is continuing in Georgia.

Since 2009 when the survey asked respondents to assess their knowledge of English, the share reporting they have no basic knowledge of English has declined from 73% to 58% in 2019, a 15 percentage point decline. When broken down by age, young people (18-35) have experienced the largest drop and older people (56+) the smallest in reporting no knowledge of English. Compared with 2009, young people are 22 percentage points less likely to report they have no basic knowledge of English. By comparison, people between the ages of 36 and 55 are 16 percentage points less likely to report no knowledge of English and people 56+ are 9 percentage points less likely to report no basic knowledge of English.


When it comes to Russian, the share of people who have no basic knowledge of Russian is much smaller – around 10% of adults in Georgia report no basic knowledge of Russian and this has been static over the years. However, the share of young people reporting either intermediate or advanced Russian knowledge has declined since 2009. While 70% of young people (18-35) reported intermediate or advanced knowledge of Russian in 2009, 54% did in 2019.



In Georgia, English language knowledge appears to be on the rise among young people. Although a lack of basic knowledge of Russian has remained low in Georgia over the last decade, people’s self-assessed fluency has declined, particularly among the young.

The data used in this blog post is available here.

Friday, September 27, 2019

The gender gap in expected wages in Georgia exists only among the well off

[Note: This blog post was originally published in partnership with OC Media, here.]

Much has been made of the gender pay gap in Georgia. A related but different economic indicator is the reserve price of labor i.e. the wage which someone wants before they would consider accepting a job. The July 2019 CRRC and NDI survey suggests a gendered gap in the reserve price of labor as well: women want significantly less than men to start working on average. However, further analysis suggests that the gap only exists among the relatively well-off and not among poorer households.

On the survey, respondents that did not consider themselves employed were asked, “Considering your education and skills, what is the minimum salary you would agree to work for?” Eight percent of respondents asked the question refused to answer and 16% reported they did not know. Among those that did know how much they would want to start a job, the average was GEL 719.  For men, the average was GEL 823 while for women, it was GEL 643 – GEL 180 less. Women’s lower reserve prices appear to stem from the larger share of women who report they would be willing to start working for GEL 500 a month (33%) compared with men (22%).

Further analysis of this question suggests that sex remains a significant predictor of the minimum salary someone would be willing to start working for, controlling for education level, settlement type, household wealth (proxied through the number of assets they own), age, and the presence of children in the household. Aside from sex, household wealth has a statistically significant association with the salary people want to start working.  In Tbilisi and other urban areas, salary expectations are also higher than in rural settlements. Among the oldest age cohort in the survey (56+), expectations were lower.

However, after controlling for the interaction between sex and other variables rather than sex in and of itself, the data suggests that the interaction between a household’s wealth and sex is the key gender related factor when it comes to the reserve price of labor. There is no significant difference between the sexes in the reserve price of labor in poorer households. However, as wealth increases, men’s reserve price of labor increases at nearly twice the rate as it does for women: for every additional asset that a household owns, men want GEL 80 more to start working on average, compared to GEL 44 for women.

Rather than wanting more money to start working than men, women have lower reserve prices overall. While women want less to start working, this is only the case when women are in relatively better off households. In poorer households men and women that are not working are willing to start work at statistically indistinguishable wages.

Note: This blog post is based on two ordinary least squares regression analysis. The first controls for sex, age group, education level, household wealth (number of assets owned, from 11 asked about), settlement type (Tbilisi, Urban, Rural), and whether or not there is children in the household as independent variables. The dependent variable is the salary someone would want in order to start working. The second regression analysis looks at the interaction between all of the previously noted variables with sex. The data used in the above analysis is available here. The replication code can be found here.

This piece was written by Dustin Gilbreath, the Deputy Research Director of CRRC-Georgia. The views presented in this article do not necessarily represent the views of CRRC-Georgia. The views presented in this article do not represent the views of the National Democratic Institute or any related entity.

Monday, September 16, 2019

What divides and what unites Georgian society?

[Note: This article was published in partnership with OC-Media, here.]

The last year has seen a number of conversations about polarization in Georgia. The President of the European Council, Donald Tusk, even commented on the issue in his Batumi speech.  One of the components of polarization, though not the sole factor, is division in society over actors, issues, and institutions.

While many things could divide the public, what do the people think and which groups report more and fewer sources of division? The April 2019 NDI-CRRC poll suggests that there are fewer perceived reasons for division in rural areas and among ethnic minorities.

Although ethnic minorities perceive fewer divisions, they also think that different issues divide the country: minorities are more likely to think that western actors create division, while ethnic Georgians are more likely to blame Russia and domestic institutions.

One factor does unite ethnicities however: the most commonly cited source of division, no matter the respondent’s ethnicity, was politicians.

The survey asked about whether 11 issues, actors, and institutions unite or divide Georgians as a society. The results suggest that politicians are most widely viewed as divisive.  Even Russia was viewed as less of a divider than politicians in Georgia. In contrast, religion and educational institutions were considered to unite society more than any of the other issues, actors, or institutions asked about. Uncertainty (don’t know responses) was greatest about NGOs (28%) and Euro-Atlantic institutions (24% for NATO and the EU).

 To further explore perceptions of division, a simple additive index of the above questions was created to carry out further analysis, with respondents receiving one point for each item they reported divided society. On average, individuals named seven items as dividing society. One in twelve (8%) reported that none of the issues asked about divide society and one in twenty (5%) reported that all of the issues asked about divided society.


The results of a regression analysis on the above index suggests that a number of socio-demographic groups perceive more issues, actors, or institutions as divisive. Ethnic Georgians, Tbilisians, and people with higher levels of education report that more groups are dividing society, all else equal. The difference is rather small for education, with people with vocational and higher education perceiving about one half of one issue more on average.

By comparison the difference is rather sharp with ethnicity. Ethnic Armenians perceive almost two issues less on average, and ethnic Azerbaijanis note around 2.5 issues less on average. The difference between settlement types falls in between, with inhabitants of rural areas highlighting about one issue less than those in Tbilisi, and those in other urban areas falling between the capital and rural areas.


With ethnicity, there are three sources of the observed differences. First, ethnic minorities express uncertainty more often than ethnic Georgians. This is particularly true of ethnic Azerbaijanis who report don’t know more often than ethnic Armenians.

Second, among those that said each of the above issues either united or divided the country, there are differences in attitudes related to foreign policy. Ethnic Armenians and Azerbaijanis are significantly less likely to report that Russia divides the country, and significantly more likely, albeit to a smaller degree, to report that NATO divides the country. Ethnic Azerbaijanis also report the EU divides the country at a greater rate.

Third, ethnic Georgians are much more critical of domestic actors. Georgians are more likely to say that politicians, educational institutions, the Georgian media, the country’s leaders, the current economic system, law enforcement, and NGOs divide the country.

While there is a division in perceptions of what divides the country between ethnicities, one thing is common among ethnic groups: of all the issues, actors, and institutions asked about on the survey politicians are the most commonly cited source of division.

Note: The above analysis was based on an ordinary least squares regression model. The model’s dependent variables was the number of issues respondents named as divisive in the survey. The independent variables included age, sex, wealth (proxied through number of assets owned), educational attainment (secondary or less, vocational, at least some tertiary), ethnicity (Georgian, Armenian, Azerbaijani), settlement type (capital, other urban, rural), and employment status (have a job versus not having a job). The data used in the analysis is available here. Replication code for the analysis is available here.


Dustin Gilbreath is the Deputy Research Director of CRRC-Georgia. The views presented in this article do not necessarily represent the views of CRRC-Georgia. The views presented in this article do not represent the views of the National Democratic Institute or any related entity.

Monday, September 09, 2019

The Easterlin Paradox and Happiness U-curve in Georgia

Two of the more prominent findings from the study of happiness are that money does not buy it (up to a point) and that young and old people are happier than those in between. That money does not buy happiness is often referred to as the Easterlin Paradox. It highlights that between and within countries happiness increases with wealth, but only up to a certain point, at which increases in wealth are associated with marginal gains in happiness. That the elderly and young are happier is referred to as the happiness U-curve. This finding has been found to hold in the West, but not in the former Soviet space, where the elderly are the least happy. This blog looks at these phenomenon in Georgia.

On the 2018 UN Women and CRRC Georgia survey, respondents were asked to rate their self-reported happiness, from “Extremely unhappy” to “Extremely happy” on an eleven point scale. A plurality of respondents reported being extremely happy (40%). By comparison, only 1% reported being extremely unhappy.


In agreement with previous studies on happiness within the post-Soviet space, increased household economic status was associated with higher levels of happiness. Individuals who were wealthier were more likely report a happier response on the scale. In contrast, those who have relatively few assets reported lower levels of happiness. However, once respondents have three out of the eleven assets asked about or more, reported happiness increases at a marginal rate, as the Easterlin Paradox would predict.



The U-shaped happiness curve does not hold in Georgia, as happiness generally decreases with age. The presence of children, sex, settlement type, household size, whether or not the respondent was displaced by conflict, and education level were not associated with happiness.



The above data suggests that the Easterlin paradox appears to hold in Georgia, with individuals becoming happier with greater wealth, up to a point. As in other post-Soviet countries, older people are generally less happy, again re-affirming the lack of a u-curve in happiness in the region.

Note: The above analysis is based on an ordinary least squares regression, where the dependent variable is the respondent's self-reported happiness level. The independent variables are respondents’ household economic status (measured with an asset index, composed of ownership of 11 assets), age, sex (male, female), education, settlement type, displacement status, household size, and age’s interaction with the presence of children in the home. Replication code for the above analysis can be found here. The data for the above analysis can be found here.


The views presented in the above blog post do not represent the views of UN Women, SDC, or any related entity.

Monday, September 02, 2019

Internal Displacements’ Impact on Attitudes towards Gender Relations

As a result of the conflicts in the 1990s and in 2008 in Abkhazia and the Tskhinvali Region/South Ossetia, nearly 6 percent of Georgia’s population is internally displaced. Previous studies have suggested that internal displacement from conflict can alter attitudes towards gender relations, and specifically perceptions of women’s household authority, tolerance of domestic violence, and attitudes towards women earning money.

This may be related to the psychological impacts of conflict and displacement on everyday household gender dynamics. Some have theorized that displaced women’s roles in the household often shift to that of breadwinner, and in response men push back by becoming more of a dominant presence in the home.At the same time, women reject their new leadership role by becoming more accepting of the idea of male authority.

A matching analysis, which compares individuals with similar social and demographic backgrounds except for whether or not the respondent had been displaced by conflict, using a 2018 nationwide survey CRRC conducted for UN Women shows that the previously noted differences in attitudes are present among Georgia’s conflict displaced population.

In the survey, male respondents in general were more likely to believe that men should have the final word in the household. However, both male and female respondents displaced by conflict were more likely to believe that men should have the final word in the household than individuals not displaced by conflict that had otherwise similar backgrounds.

As it relates to domestic violence, non-displaced women were least tolerant of domestic violence as a means to keep the family together, while female displaced respondents and non-displaced male respondents were more tolerant. Moreover, male respondents displaced by conflict were more tolerant in their attitudes towards domestic violence for the sake of family preservation than all other respondents.

In relation to women earning money, female respondents were more likely to believe that a woman earning more than her husband would cause problems regardless of whether they were displaced by the conflict. However, male respondents not displaced by conflict were less likely to believe that women earning more would cause relationship problems than men displaced by conflict.

Men and women displaced by conflict are more tolerant of domestic violence over the non-displaced in Georgia. Males displaced by conflict are more likely to believe men should have the final word in the home over non-displaced individuals, and non-displaced men are less likely to believe that if women earn more than their husbands, it will cause relationship problems. These findings support past research suggesting that the process of internal displacement can lead to adverse gender norms.

Note: The above analysis is based on the use of matching together with a regression analysis, where the dependent variable is the respondent's attitudes towards gender relations. The independent variables are displacement status and sex.  The individuals in the sample were matched on the following characteristics: parental education level, age, ethnicity, settlement type, and sex. Replication code for the above analysis can be found here.

The views presented in the above blog post do not represent the views of UN Women, SDC, or any affiliated entity.