The income of the wealthiest 10% of Kazakhstanis is 5.7 times higher than that of the poorest 10%, according to first-quarter 2026 data released by the Bureau of National Statistics.
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The bureau measured income inequality using the decile ratio, which compares the average income of the richest 10% of the population with that of the poorest 10%.
Nationwide, the ratio stood at 5.66, meaning the highest-income decile earned nearly six times as much as the lowest-income decile.
The largest income gaps were recorded in the North Kazakhstan region, where the ratio reached 6.5, and the Akmola region, where it was 6.18.
Among Kazakhstan’s largest cities, the ratio was 5.96 in Almaty and 4.86 in Astana.
For comparison, the decile income ratio exceeds 10 in the U.S., while in many European countries it ranges between five and six.
How income is distributed
According to the bureau, the poorest 10% of Kazakhstanis earned an average monthly per capita income of 49,800 tenge (about $100), accounting for 4.17% of the country’s total income.
The middle-income group (the fifth decile) had an average monthly per capita income of 93,300 tenge ($190) and received 7.8% of total income.
The wealthiest 10% reported monthly incomes ranging from 200,000 ($400) to 2.4 million tenge ($5,000), with an average monthly income of 283,000 tenge per person. This group accounted for nearly 24% of all income.
The lowest aggregate income among the poorest decile was recorded in the Ulytau region, at 1 billion tenge, followed by the Abai region, at 2.8 billion tenge.
Among the wealthiest decile, the largest aggregate incomes were recorded in Almaty, at 85 billion tenge, and Astana, at 47 billion tenge.
Gini coefficient indicates relatively low inequality
The bureau also published Kazakhstan’s Gini coefficient, the most widely used international measure of income inequality.
The Gini coefficient ranges from 0 to 1, with 0 representing perfect income equality and 1 representing complete inequality.
Kazakhstan’s Gini coefficient stood at 0.283 in the first quarter of 2026, a level generally considered to reflect relatively low income inequality.
However, inequality was more pronounced in several regions. The coefficient reached 0.30 in both the Akmola and Pavlodar regions, while it exceeded 0.29 in Almaty, the North Kazakhstan and Ulytau regions.
