Over the past 20 years, the social stratum of super-rich Russians has not changed

Over the past 20 years, the social stratum of super-rich Russians has remained virtually unchanged, according to the work of Svetlana Mareeva and Ekaterina Slobodenyuk, experts at the Center for Stratification Research at the Higher School of Economics. We are talking about Russians who were included at least once in the annually published Forbes list of the richest businessmen in the period 2004–2021 and earned the bulk of their fortunes without being government employees. As the authors of the work note, although “the degree of reliability and correctness of the data on which the Forbes list is based” can be called controversial, it at least makes it possible to assess the structure, dynamics and stability of the group of “noticeable rich”, regardless of the accuracy of estimates of their wealth in money.

The list of the 200 richest businessmen in the Russian Federation annually consisted of more than 90% of those who were present in it the year before (the first hundred – 88%). By 2021, the situation has changed slightly – 60.5% of participants in that year’s rating were present in it in 2011. If we compare the data only for the first 100, then 37% of the 2021 list was present on it back in 2004. As a result, the group has aged almost eight years over the decade: from an average of 50 years in 2011 to 58 in 2021. The fact that the group’s renewal is slowing down over the long term is evidenced by the fact that in 2004 the average age in the group of 100 richest businessmen was 47 years old, and in 1995 it was 42 years old. Due to the slow renewal of the composition of billionaires, the initial significant difference between their fortunes remains: in 2011, their average value was $2.5 billion, with a median of $1 billion and a decile coefficient of 15.3. In 2021, while the average wealth increased to $3.3 billion, the median changed slightly ($1.2 billion), and the decile coefficient dropped to 13.8 – that is, even within the group of super-rich, the gap was growing.

At the same time, as the authors of the study note, an important change in the sociological portrait of the super-rich is connected with the emergence of female billionaires. If in 2011 they made up 0.5% of the group, then in 2021 they are already 3.5%, that is, their number has increased from one to seven. Thus, a high gender imbalance remains and is a distinctive feature of the group, but the “golden doors” have opened slightly for women in recent years.

Anastasia Manuilova