The poverty line is an indicator introduced in 2021. It is determined using a special methodology and goes just below the subsistence level.
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In Russia, for the first time in the history of observations, less than 10% of the population turned out to be below the poverty line. According to Rosstat, in 2022 there were 14.3 million poor people in the country, which is 9.8% of the total number of Russians. Interestingly, in the previous version, published about 2 months ago, the department estimated the number of poor people per million higher – at 15.3 million people, or 10.5%. However, these figures were the lowest since the 1990s.
“The main reason for the decline in poverty is a number of financial social support measures taken in 2022 in relation to the poor part of the population,” said kp.ru Professor of the Financial University under the Government of the Russian Federation, Doctor of Economics Alexander Safonov. – Pensions were indexed, lump-sum payments were made to pensioners, support was provided to families with children.
Thus, since May 1 last year, approximately 5 million families with children aged 8 to 16 inclusive received new monthly payments. We are talking about families whose average income per person does not exceed the subsistence level in the region.
In addition, income growth was also affected by the decrease in the unemployment rate in 2022. According to Safonov, the fact that since 2018 the minimum wage (minimum wage) cannot be lower than the subsistence minimum for a working person also played a role.
– This automatically led to the fact that a full-time person cannot receive below the poverty level, – said the expert. – But provided that he does not have children – when a child appears, the average per capita income of the family drops sharply.
The fact that the share of wages and entrepreneurial income in the income of Russians has increased is confirmed by Rosstat data. So, if at the end of 2021 the share of social payments in the structure of household income was 23.2% (in 2020 – 22.1%), then in 2022 it was 20.7%.
There is also a gloomy demographic reason for the improvement in our income figures.
“In 2021-22, there was a high mortality rate from covid,” Safonov said. – This has affected all segments of the population, but the pandemic has hit the elderly and the poor especially hard, who have less opportunity to monitor their health than wealthier people.
WHO ARE THE POOR
The poverty line is an indicator introduced in 2021. It is determined using a special methodology and goes just below the subsistence level. For example, the poverty line at the end of 2022 was 13,545 rubles. And the living wage in the whole of the Russian Federation is 13,919 rubles. per capita.
