Poverty missed the Russians – Newspaper Kommersant No. 165 (7366) of 09/08/2022

According to Rosstat, in the second quarter the number of poor in Russia fell to 17.6 million people, 12.1% of the population. This, according to the department, led to the introduction by the government of new measures to support poor families with children and a 10% increase in the subsistence minimum, the minimum wage (minimum wage) and pensions. In the third quarter, according to experts, a further reduction in poverty is possible, but already in 2023 it may require, for example, an additional increase in the minimum wage.

According to the results of the second quarter of 2022, the poverty rate in the Russian Federation decreased, Rosstat reported. According to the agency, in April-June of this year, there were 17.6 million people in the country with incomes below the poverty line, 3.3 million people less than in the first quarter of 2022, and 600 thousand people than in the second quarter 2021. The poor in the second quarter accounted for 12.1% of the country’s inhabitants, which is 2.2 percentage points (p.p.) and 0.4 p.p. lower than in the first quarter of 2022 and in the second of 2021, respectively. To calculate the number and share of the poor, Rosstat used the “poverty line” parameter approved by the government at the end of 2021. It corresponds to the cost of the consumer basket for the fourth quarter of 2020, taking into account accumulated inflation: according to the results of the second quarter of 2022, this is 13.8 thousand rubles. (see Kommersant dated September 24, 2020).

As explained in the press service of Rosstat, first of all, the decrease in the number of the poor in the Russian Federation is associated with an increase in the volume of social support. Thus, in April-June, the cash income of the population amounted to 19.4 trillion rubles, and 21.2% of this amount fell on social benefits (4.1 trillion rubles). Compared to the second quarter of 2021, their share in the structure of household income increased by 0.9 percentage points, or 0.7 trillion rubles, and compared to the first quarter of this year, by 1.2 percentage points, increasing by 948.4 billion rubles. The growth of social benefits, we recall, is due to an increase in the subsistence minimum, the minimum wage and pensions for non-working pensioners by 10% from June 1. Also, since April, the government began to pay benefits to low-income families for children from 8 to 17 years old.

According to Igor Polyakov, an expert of the Central Committee for the MASF, the decrease in the number of poor people in the second quarter compared to the first was expected and is due to seasonality. The reduction in comparison with the same period last year, according to him, is due to the expansion of the number of recipients of benefits – and the positive effect from this will be visible in the third quarter of this year. “Another factor in reducing poverty this fall could be the indexation of public sector salaries. However, by the end of the year, poverty in the Russian Federation may rise again if enterprises start laying off workers and reducing salaries for those who remain due to external economic pressure,” he notes. At the same time, according to Vice-Rector of the Higher School of Economics Lilia Ovcharova, although the introduction of targeted benefits to help poor families – payments for children or social contracts – really helped to reduce poverty, the potential of these tools has almost been exhausted. “The reduction in poverty that we can see in the third quarter will occur mainly due to an increase in pensions for non-working pensioners and the minimum wage for working ones,” she notes. According to the expert, in order to further reduce the number of poor people in the country, the government will have to look for new tools. The best thing, if unemployment remains relatively low, would be to increase the minimum wage at a faster pace, up to 150% of the subsistence level (for more details, see Kommersant-Online of August 27). “The other way to reduce low-wage jobs, by contrast, creating high-performance jobs through public infrastructure projects, is more difficult to manage,” she notes.

Anastasia Manuylova