Who in Georgia will lose social benefits? Government changes rules for unified welfare database

The Georgian government has revised the rules for the unified database of low-income families. Under the new regulations, some families will automatically lose access to social assistance.

According to the changes, authorities will remove a family from the database without assessing its socio-economic situation if taxable salary income per family member reaches or exceeds 1,250 lari ($463) a month during the three months before the reporting month.

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According to media reports, the number of children who have died over the past five years has exceeded 30.

Authorities will also remove deceased people from the database, along with family members who receive one of the following statuses after registration:

• prisoners serving custodial sentences following a final court ruling,
• people undergoing compulsory medical treatment,
• individuals performing mandatory military service,
• people who leave the country for more than three months,
• people declared missing or legally presumed dead by a court,
• residents of state-funded institutional care facilities.

In other cases, the Social Service Agency must reassess the socio-economic situation of families registered in the database during 2026. The review will also apply to families covered by special administrative rules introduced during the Covid pandemic in 2020.

Prime Minister Irakli Kobakhidze first raised the issue of revising the social assistance register during a speech in parliament in February 2026. According to Kobakhidze, an initial review showed that around 8% of benefit recipients were “wealthy” and did not need state support.

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Two days after Kobakhidze’s remarks, Health Minister Mikheil Sarjveladze said the Social Service Agency was launching an “active process” to reassess the unified database of low-income families.

According to Sarjveladze, the existing data no longer reflected the country’s economic situation or the economic growth recorded in recent years. He argued that this created opportunities for “manipulating figures and creating false impressions”.

Social benefits in Georgia