Head of the Accounts Chamber Alexei Kudrin expressed the opinion that the address assistance to needy families will reduce poverty in Russia twice in a short time. To implement this measure, it would be necessary for a relatively small amount of funds – “a few hundred billion rubles,” Kudrin said in an interview for RBC.
family support
Kudrin called on to include in this poverty model to include a multifactor assessment of the need, as well as the ranking of the amount of payments depending on the income of the family. The annual implementation of such a system will require “a few hundred billion rubles.”
Differentiated approach
According to the head of the Accounts Chamber, in Russia there are already examples of an effective approach to the fight against poverty. By a reasonable decision, he considers payments to low-income families with children from three to seven years, a decree of which in early March 2021 signed Russian President Vladimir Putin.
The volume of payments to families is established depending on the level of their income, reaching 50, 75 or 100 percent of the subsistence minimum for the child in the region. At the same time, the benefit was previously paid in the same amount: families received 50 percent of the children’s subsistence minimum.
Kudrin is confident that this differentiated approach can be used not only when working with children from seven to seven years, but also with older in need of needle.
accounting of property
Chairman of the Accounts Chamber added that it is equally important to take into account the property values. If you contact the multifactor model of the need, it says that if there is a second car or apartment, a citizen is limited in obtaining social benefits. “With this restriction, we immediately go to a decline in poverty more than twice,” he stressed.
poverty multidimensionality
Kudrin agreed that the one-dimensional concept of absolute poverty adopted in Russia, in which those in need were determined as citizens with income below the subsistence minimum, differs from international approaches to multidimensional poverty.
The head of the Accounting Chamber recalled that in 2020 the department submitted a report on different approaches to poverty analysis. Within the framework of the document, experts recommended to the government also to assess the multidimensional poverty and the level of non-monetary deprivation – the results of sociological surveys, which show how many families in the country needed tools for food, clothing and shoes, travel and other needs.
According to Rosstat estimates, in 2020, the deficit of poor population income in Russia is the amount of funds that are not enough Russians to the level of the subsistence minimum – amounted to 727 billion rubles. The greatest income shortage is observed in families with three or more children, as well as families with unemployed. According to the results of 2020, the level of poverty in Russia has reached a minimum since 2014 and amounted to 12.1 percent of the population or 17.8 million people.