Poverty in Modern Russia

A. A. Razumov, M. A. Yagodkina (M.: Formula Prava, 2007 - 336 p.)

The book examines two scarcely studied approaches to poverty investigation. The first one shows theoretically and empirically that different approaches to definition and evaluation of poverty and use of different databases result in different indices and parameters of poverty in Russia; this feeds the dispute around the poverty problem and raises its political and scientific acuteness. In this context, 14 poverty lines have been developed and compared; propositions on streamlining poverty monitoring, methods and indices of its evaluation worked out. The necessity to implement in Russia the concept of multi-level poverty, which suggests various social welfare types for various poverty lines, has been grounded. The second approach suggests studying poverty as a result of economic inequality of the economically active population on the labor market, i. e. from the viewpoint of 'employment-poverty' relations, when socio-economic differentiation of the economically active population on the labor market primarily determines its differentiation by living standards. The research focuses on the factors determining stable and safe employment and decent compensation as major guarantees against poverty. The book gives a detailed overview of the ways to reduce the number of low-paid jobs including poverty profiling, engagement of the economically active poor in employment programs, creation of an efficient system of the disabled poor protection etc. The book is based on the results of research and development carried out by the authors for the Russian Ministry of Labor and Russian regions under the ILO and World Bank programs.

The book is recommended to legislative and executive authority officials, researchers and practitioners; it can be used for relevant training of students and postgraduate students of economics and sociology.