According to the statistics, living standard in the new EU countries (Poland, Latvia and Lithuania) is significantly higher than in Belarus. This cannot be denied provided you have proper data, unless we deal with someone else but Belarusian state ideology or with deliberate delusion.
Regarding most Belarusian citizens, their attitude to this issue is to a greater extent determined by the degree of awareness. In general, most adult population admits this. Thus, almost two thirds of voters consider that the living standard in Poland is higher than in Belarus (only 2.9% said the opposite) and 45-48% believe it is higher in Latvia and Lithuania (6.2-6.4% don’t agree).
The answers of those who visited these countries are even more definite. Thus, out of the respondents who traveled to Poland and saw personally the situation in the country (i.e. every fourth Belarusian citizen), 81.1% say that their standard of living is higher then in this country. Out of those who visited Latvia and Lithuania (every eighth), 63-64% have the same opinion.
However, those who haven’t been to those countries give fairly different answers. (See Table 1). Those whose opinions are closer to truth are fewer among them.
Table 1. Distribution of answers to the question “Compare living standards in Belarus and in the neighboring countries. Which is higher?” between the respondents who have never visited these countries, %*
| Variant of answer |
Higher |
Same |
Lower |
| Poland |
59.4 |
16.4 |
3.2 |
| Latvia |
44.5 |
20.2 |
6.3 |
| Lithuania |
42.6 |
21.9 |
5.8 |
* Table is read across
What guides the citizens in their estimates of the living standard in the neighboring countries? Where do they get an idea of this if they never visited those countries? It is easy to suggest that the mass media is the main source of such information. Yet, the media in Belarus differ significantly that is well demonstrated in Tables 2 and 3.
Table 2. Distribution of answers to the question “From which sources do you get information about EU countries?” depending on the answer to the question on living standard as compared to Belarus, %
| Variant of answer |
Latvia |
Lithuania |
Poland |
|||
|
higher |
lower |
higher |
lower |
higher |
lower |
|
| From state-run mass media |
48.4 |
52.0 |
46.8 |
52.8 |
47.7 |
51.1 |
| From non-state mass media |
27.2 |
12.0 |
27.8 |
15.6 |
24.2 |
14.1 |
| From Russian mass media |
48.7 |
28.6 |
48.3 |
35.6 |
44.0 |
25.8 |
| From Western mass media |
17.9 |
4.1 |
17.9 |
4.3 |
15.7 |
12.1 |
Table 3. Distribution of answers to the question “What TV channels do you preferably watch?” depending on the answer to the question on living standard as compared to Belarus, %
| Variant of answer |
Latvia |
Lithuania |
Poland |
|||
|
higher |
lower |
higher |
higher |
lower |
higher |
|
| ONT |
66.7 |
75.6 |
66.5 |
73.3 |
67.8 |
71.5 |
| BT |
30.2 |
46.4 |
30.3 |
44.4 |
33.2 |
45.1 |
| NTV |
49.2 |
33.5 |
49.4 |
34.9 |
33.4 |
31.8 |
| RTR |
44.8 |
44.2 |
30.5 |
37.2 |
30.8 |
36.1 |
| EuroNews |
5.9 |
– |
4.3 |
– |
4.2 |
– |
Thus, over half (51-53%) of those who think that living standard in Poland, Latvia and Lithuania is lower than in Belarus, draw information about EU countries from the state-run mass media. Those of them who get this information from non-state and Russian media are twice as little as those who think that the living standard in these countries is higher than in Belarus.
There are by 15% and by 55% more of those among them who watch ONT and BT channels respectively. Also, there are by 55% less of those among them who watch NTV channel and none watch EuroNews Channel.
This draws us to the conclusion that the Belarusian state-run mass media either conceal or deliberately distort true information about living in EU countries (especially in the neighboring countries which are newcomers in the EU) trying to built a more favorable picture of living in this country.