Assessment of Territorial Disparities in the Context of SocioEconomic Development of the Country։ The Case Study of Armenia

Territorial inequality is a serious obstacle to the socio-economic development of any country. Therefore, to reduce poverty, unemployment, and improve the well-being of the population, not only the intensification of economic activity in the country is needed, but also the provision of its territorial inclusion. However, as natural and scientifically explicable these causes are, their consequences are undesirable, exacerbating tensions in all spheres of public life and giving rise to instability, crises, unemployment and poverty. At the same time, the deepening of territorial disparities is even more worrying in developing countries and countries with economies in transition, where disproportionate territorial economic development, in the absence of funding, also leads to social stratification. The article discusses the territorial disparities of the Republic of Armenia in the context of socio-economic development. In order to reveal the existing asymmetries between the capital Yerevan and other regions, we have developed a system of socio-economic indicators, on the basis of which sectoral indices have been calculated for the whole country, as well as for its separate regions. Then, the mentioned system of indicators was used for cluster analysis by regions, as a result of which they were classified into 4 main groups.