The effect of partial mobilization: the number of poor Russians has sharply decreased in Russia

According to the agency, those whose incomes do not exceed 13,688 rubles a month turned out to be below the line. There were fewer poor people by autumn than at the beginning of the year.

Yekaterina Maksimova

At the end of 2021, the population with incomes below the poverty line was 16.1 million people (11%). But the statistics for the first quarter of this year turned out to be horrendous: the share of the poor in January, February and March increased to 20.9 million Russians (14.3% of the country's inhabitants). And by the end of the third quarter of 2022, the "list" The poor have fantastically decreased by almost 5 million people.

The general director of the Institute of Regional Problems, Dmitry Zhuravlyov, explained the alarming figures of the first quarter as rampant inflation. “The statistics were then affected by inflation for the first quarter. Moreover, this is consumer inflation - prices for goods and services”, - Zhuravlyov said.

Recall that in January the inflation rate was 1%, in February it was already 2.2%, and against the backdrop of the beginning of the NWO, inflation accelerated to 10.0%. Prices for non-food products rose most noticeably (+12.9%). In the regions, the spread in the price index then ranged from 2.7% to 13.2%.

Chief Economist of the Institute of Stock Market and Management (IFRU), Candidate of Economic Sciences Mikhail Belyayev believes that by the third quarter the statistics were mainly corrected by social payments and salaries.

“Recently, there have been many such payments that also applied to families with children, a number of other payments, plus indexation of pensions. In general, in some industries there was even an increase in wages. And Rosstat takes into account clear parameters. The poverty line is 13,688 rubles and not a ruble more. If this indicator is exceeded, even slightly, then little has changed in a person’s life, but officially he is no longer included in the population with incomes below the poverty line”, - Belyayev explained.

Doctor of Economics, professor at the National Research University Higher School of Economics Iosif Diskin adds that millions of Russians have “fallen out” of the poor, including through payments to the mobilized.

“Let's remember what happened during these nine months - a special military operation began. Because of this, the incomes of employees of military enterprises associated with the defense industry have increased significantly. The incomes of people serving parallel imports and logistics have increased significantly. But in general, for 9 months, the incomes of the middle class have significantly decreased. And the incomes of the bottom deciles - the three low-income groups - have risen. Including significantly increased the income of those who fell under the partial mobilization. And these were mostly still representatives of low-income groups. We are talking about average values: and when a person from such a group began to receive 100 thousand rubles instead of 10 thousand, this means that this has a significant impact on the entire decile. So there has been a decrease in poverty for a number of families, the standard of living of such families has changed significantly”, - said Iosif Diskin.

Dmitry Zhuravlyov agrees that payments from the state, including those mobilized, were able to reduce the number of poor Russians - the average income of Russian families has grown. “The only question is that in the regions there are different boundaries of this poverty. Rosstat data - "average temperature in the hospital." Poverty is what? This is the level of consumption. It will be necessary to carefully look at the dynamics in the next quarter”, - Zhuravlyov said.

Rosstat clarifies that the population with incomes below the poverty line began to decline in the first half of the year, when, according to the results of the first six months of 2022, 18.9 million Russians (or 13% of the population) were below the poverty line. Directly in the second quarter, there were 17.6 million (12.1%) such citizens. And according to the results of the third quarter, compared with the second quarter, 2.3 million people left the group of the poor (up to 15.3 million people or 10.5%).

At the same time, Rosstat recorded a decline in real disposable incomes of Russians. According to the results of the first, second and third quarters, real disposable income decreased by 1.2%, 0.8% and 3.4%, respectively. For nine months, the reduction was -1.7%. That is, both the incomes of Russians and the number of poor people in Russia were declining.

The agency officially explains the statistics by increasing social benefits and rising wages.

Thus, compared with the third quarter of 2021, the volume of social payments in July, August and September 2022 increased by 170.4 billion rubles (from 4.18 trillion rubles to 4.35 trillion rubles). The difference between the second and third quarters of 2022 is even more noticeable: plus 243.4 billion rubles. Due to targeted measures of social support, the incomes of the poorest Russians in the third quarter increased by 27.8% in nominal terms.

As for the wages of employees, according to Rosstat, in the third quarter of 2022, Russians received 1.1 trillion rubles more from employers (11.1 trillion rubles in total). This is compared to the same period in 2021. The difference between the second and third quarters of 2022 was +157.2 billion rubles.

“It's good that the statistics still went up, but when 10.5% of the country's inhabitants are below the poverty line, it's still a lot”, - Mikhail Belyayev summed up.