The poverty level in Russia at the end of 2023 decreased from 9.8% to 9.3%

The poverty level in the Russian Federation at the end of 2023 reached a historical minimum, falling from 9.8% to 9.3% of the country’s population, Rosstat reported yesterday. According to his data, 13.5 million out of 146 million Russians can now be classified as poor. According to experts, the main drivers of the reduction in the number of people with incomes below the subsistence level in 2023 were an increase in wages in the face of a shortage of personnel and increased payments to families with children.

According to Rosstat data released on Wednesday, by the end of 2023 the poverty level in Russia dropped to 9.3% of the population, or 13.5 million people. Thus, the historical minimum reached at the end of 2022 has been updated (9.8%, or 14.3 million people, see “Kommersant” dated March 11, 2023). Over the course of the year, 800 thousand people left the category of “officially poor” in the Russian Federation.

Let us explain that to calculate the number of poor, Rosstat uses the cost of the consumer basket per person for the fourth quarter of 2020, taking into account accumulated inflation. In 2023, this amount was on average 14.3 thousand rubles. per month. Although since 2021 the Ministry of Labor has been operating with a new concept – the “poverty line”, it still means the same consumption-related methodology introduced by Rosstat back in 1992.

According to the statistics agency, the poverty rate in 2023 varied significantly from quarter to quarter, as it has a pronounced seasonality. Thus, in the first quarter the number of Russians with incomes below the poverty line was 19.6 million people (13.5% of the population), in the second – 15.7 million people (10.8%), in the third – 14.8 million (10 .2%), in the fourth – only 9.9 million people (6.8%).

TsMAKP expert Igor Polyakov notes that the reduction in poverty in the Russian Federation was expected. This was most influenced by a 3.6% increase in GDP in 2023, as well as payments to families with children of a single allowance from the budget. “The economic growth and the resulting shortage of personnel led to an increase in wages both in nominal and real terms. However, due to the peculiarities of Rosstat’s methodology, in reality the indicator of real salaries could be lower than stated – by several percentage points,” says the expert.

Acting General Director of the All-Russian Research Institute of Labor Vladimir Smirnov notes that now the situation on the labor market is extremely favorable for the worker – the unemployment rate has reached a historical minimum, a “job seeker’s market” has formed, which has led to an increase in salary offers and salaries in general. It was also noted that since 2023, a unified benefit has been introduced for children from birth to 17 years of age, which is provided to families with low incomes based on a comprehensive assessment of need. The amount of this benefit is 50%, 75% or 100% of the regional subsistence minimum.

The results of 2023 show that the goal stated by Vladimir Putin in his address to the Federal Assembly – to reduce the poverty level to 7% by 2030 – is quite realistic, says Igor Polyakov. According to him, in the future, thanks to an increase in the minimum wage by 10% from January 1 of this year, the impact of income from the labor market on the poverty level will grow.

It should be noted that for now, according to the CMACP, the country maintains a high indicator of the so-called sociological poverty level (defined as the proportion of the population that does not have enough for food or only has enough for them, but not for clothes and shoes) – it is 30% from the number of residents of the Russian Federation. In the future, it is precisely this “pre-poverty” that may require increased attention from the state (for more details, see “Kommersant” dated August 18, 2023).

Anastasia Manuilova