POVERTY AS A RESULT OF TRANSITION IN WEST BALKAN COUNTRIES

West Balkan region gathering Serbia, Montenegro, Albania and Bosnia and Herzegovina is a region with more then 14 millions inhabitants. In past twenty years this region had dramatic changes, from central-planned, communist regimes toward democratic societies. Unfortunately these changes were followed by civil war in former Yugoslavia, leaving problems of poverty and social exclusion very visible. The region of the West Balkans contains more than 2 million unemployed, while the total number of the poor has been on the increase since the second half of 2008. The aim of this paper is to present the scale of poverty and its causes together with the current situation and trends in the West Balkans area