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УДК 339.12
БЕДНОСТЬ В РОССИИ: СОЦИАЛЬНО-ЭКОНОМИЧЕСКАЯ ДИАГНОСТИКА СИТУАЦИИ
Х. З. Ксенофонтова
POVERTY IN RUSSIA: SOCIO-ECONOMIC DIAGNOSIS OF THE SITUATION
K. Z. Ksenofontova
Аннотация. Борьба с бедностью является одним из политических приоритетов российского правительства. Эффективная политика преодоления бедности должна строиться на осознании факторов, вызывающих бедность, и необходимо использовать разные инструменты профилактики попадания за черту бедности. В то же время вопросы масштабов распространения бедности, а также профиля российской бедности во многом остаются открытыми. Они тем более требуют ответа, когда речь идет о региональных ее аспектах.
Ключевые слова: бедность, борьба против бедности, черты бедности в России.
Abstract. The Russian government declared struggle against poverty one of the main political priorities. The effective policy of poverty elimination must be based on clear understanding of the factors that cause poverty. The government should use different tools to prevent the population from finding themselves below the poverty line and helping those in difficult financial situation. At the same time, the problems of poverty expansion as well as the profile of poverty in Russia remain largely open. Moreover, the problems need to be solved taking into account the factors that lead to poverty in different regions of Russia. Russia as a diverse country is expected to have different poverty profiles in different regions.
Key words: poverty, struggle against poverty, poverty line in Russia.
According to data from Russian Monitoring Survey of the economic situation and population health in Russia, the majority of Russian families (57 %) experienced poverty between 1998 and 2012. The analysis of the factors that determine the length of poverty period at that time has revealed some regularity.
It was found that such factor as the number of children in the family prolongs the period of poverty. Unlike the situation in developed countries, families of single women with children in Russia experienced shorter periods of poverty and in families of pensioners the periods were even shorter. The fact that family members have University diplomas reduces periods of poverty.
The specific character of the Russian labour market adaptation to transformational shocks, when major changes occurred not through job redundancies but through wages reduction, leads to low-paid jobs emergence and, consequently, to a significant number of people who do work but remain poor. As a result, the fact that the adult members of the family have jobs was not statistically important. Families with members employed in the public sector experienced longer periods of poverty. It is common knowledge that economic growth is able to improve the situation in this respect: during the period of recovery the earnings of all groups of population grow, less families experience extreme poverty. Indeed, the number of the poor in Russia in recent years has been steadily decreasing.
The number of people below the poverty line in Russia kept on decreasing in the second quarter of 2011, but it still remains higher if compared with the same period of 2010. According to the Russian Federal Statistics Agency, 19.5 million people (13.8 % of the entire population) have income that is less than the living wage ($320). For comparison it should be noted in the first quarter of 2011 the number of the poor was higher by 3.4 million people. However, the situation was better in the second quarter of 2010: there were 18 million people below the poverty line (12.7 % of the entire population). Even less comforting were the figures in the III and IV quarters of 2010 [1].
The problem of poverty is one of the most pressing social problems of modern Russia. It is poverty that limits the access of a large part of the population to the resources of development: well-paid jobs, better education and healthcare, successful socialization of children and the youth. Low income of most families combined with the excessive polarization of income leads to a social gap in the society, causing social tension, preventing successful development of the country, determining the crisis processes in families and in the society as a whole.
The main reason for the high level of poverty in Russia is low wages that do not ensure the reproductive and stimulating functions of pay.
Today, even the average salary does not provide adequate living conditions for employed people and their families and serves more as a social benefit. Low pay of most people goes along with economically and socially unjustified differentiation in senior management remuneration.
The lack of adequate conditions for economic activity of a significant part of population affects the quality of the human capital.
Low pay does not allow switching to market mechanisms in the social sector, to develop the system of paid services, prevents for carrying out reforms in pensions system and housing and utility sector. Low wages do not permit to abandon some benefits for employed people and provide effective social assistance for the disabled.
There are three most important economic factors that affect the situation with poverty in Russia:
- Decrease of the average income of population
- Low level of social guarantees
- Increased inequality of income distribution
Along with traditional social poverty (large families with dependent children, single- parent families with children) there exists economic poverty. It is the situation when citizens are not able to secure a socially adequate living standard.
Moreover, merely getting a job by able-bodied citizens cannot serve as an adequate source of wealthiness for the following reasons:
- regulatory enforcement to the minimum wages level does not allow the employed to receive decent remuneration;
- unavailability of labour market in depressed regions (small towns and settlements) where economic situation is determined by a small number of enterprises (even one enterprise or factory) that are close the stagnation.
There are some permanent sources of poverty in a number of non-budgetary sector industries such as textiles, footwear, clothing, and woodworking. Higher rates of poverty can be observed in rural areas, this is due to the extremely low level of wages in agriculture.
It should be noted that the employed people with so-called «grey» wages (paid unofficially) could be reckoned as «the poor with jobs», even though their wages may be higher than the living wage.
Some measures are taken nowadays to overcome poverty: assistance in getting a job, the wages increase, improvements in tax policy, smoothing the socioeconomic development levels of regions and others. As for measures to eliminate social poverty, they involve some steps taken by the social security agencies to redistribute income.
In accordance with the Program of Socio-economic Development of the Russian Federation for the long-term perspective (2010-2020), the population real earnings will increase by 24-28 % in comparison with 2010. At the same time, real wages will increase by 30-34 % due to the increase in labour productivity and living wage and decrease in payroll tax [1].
The accelerated development of social services sector and entitlement programs will ensure higher standards of living and consumption. The low-income groups will experience more rapid growth of income. New mechanisms of pensions financing and pensionary obligations will guarantee financial stability of the pension system and the improvement of the living standard of pensioners.
There are the following key factors that influenced the poverty expansion in the years of reforms in Russia:
- increase in the number of the unemployed among able-bodied people of the working age;
- increase in the number of the employees with wages below the living
wage;
- limited access of the people with low income to social benefits and free social services.
There is an urgent necessity to create conditions for able-bodied population to overcome poverty using their own efforts and abilities. It is essential to provide them with access to resources that will help them to find the way out of poverty by themselves. The key problems must be solved in several directions: institutional regulation of the labour market, remuneration of labour, jobs creation, assistance to the unemployed.
List of reference links 1. Program of Socio-economic Development of the Russian Federation. - 2012.
Ксенофонтова Халидя Зейнятулловна кандидат социологических наук, доцент, кафедра управления бизнесом,
Пензенский государственный университет E-mail: xenophontova@mail.ru
Ksenofontova Khalidya Zeynyatullovna candidate of sociological sciences, associate professor, department of business management,
Penza State University
УДК 339.12 Ксенофонтова, Х. З.
Бедность в России: социально-экономическая диагностика ситуации /
Х. З. Ксенофонтова // Модели, системы, сети в экономике, технике, природе и обществе. - 2013. - № 3 (7). - С. 211-213.
