The article states the necessity to improve the methodology of assessing the level of poverty, including the regional one. The analysis of poverty level in the Samara region is based on the absolute conception of establishment of a poverty line, structure of the regional consumer basket and energy value of food products constituting it. The structure of households consumer expenses is investigated. The authors offer to use an integrated indicator for poverty measuring covering monetary and not monetary one-aspect indicators. Along with indicators of income and expenses of the population the presented system of private indicators includes the characteristic of the labor market condition, access to education services, health care and housing. The methodology the poverty level assessment is tested on information arrays of Privolzhsky Federal District (PFD). The article provides typologization of subjects of PFD dependent on the level of poverty problem sharpness.
The article provides the results of a correlation analysis of the functional relationships between indicators of quality of life and human potential in Russia. The study was conducted on the basis of regional statistics for the period from 2010 to 2018 with the account of time series. While the notion of quality of life describes rather conditions of life, human potential reflects qualitative characteristics of population. Human potential is considered in a broad sense as a set of population characteristics that act as opportunities for realization and comprehensive development of a person in accordance with his aspirations and needs. In the author's view, human potential is of a paramount importance in the development of society and man, and quality of life acts as a factor designed to maintain and develop it. This determines the relevance of the topic of this study, aimed at finding functional relationships between the indicators of quality of life and human potential. The author selected 6 indicators of human potential: natural population growth, educational attainment, visits to museums and theaters, life expectancy, incidence of alcoholism and drug addiction, and crime rates. There were also selected 13 indicators of quality of life: population with income below the subsistence minimum, life expectancy, infant mortality rate, morbidity, number of doctors of all specialties, population with higher and secondary professional education, provision of places for preschool children in educational institutions, number of students, average per capita income, R/ P10% ratio, Gini coefficient, number of recorded crimes, unemployment rate. Some indicators are both indicators of the quality of life and indicators of the quality of population that made it possible to identify functional relationships between various aspects of human potential. The correlation analysis carried out in general for all years and regions discovered a number of regularities and allowed us to construct hypotheses, which were further tested in the regional context with the account of time series. The results of the analysis allow us to draw conclusions about strong impact of monetary income, poverty and unemployment on most indicators of human potential. There were also found relationships between the components of human potential themselves, such as life expectancy, crime rates, incidence of alcoholism and drug addiction. In addition, there was identified a number of regularities in the relationships between individual indicators of human potential and socio-economic indicators of quality of life. The relationships found also include: impact of crime on inequality, of infant mortality on natural population growth, etc.
This article deals with the issue of the impact of universal basic income (UBI) on the standards and quality of life of population, highlights some theoretical and methodological aspects of its introduction, characterizes the current state of research on this issue and the experience of other countries. It presents the basic conceptual provisions of the scientific study conducted by the authors, which are aimed at the theoretical and methodological substantiation of the idea of introducing universal basic income in Russia, its forms, tools and possible application mechanisms for transformation of the processes and structures of the functioning of the labor and employment sphere, development of human potential, reduction of absolute monetary poverty and excessive socio-economic inequality, that meet modern technological challenges and lead to improving the standards and quality of life of people and the sustainability of the state and society. The presented study is of high significance due to influence of the category "universal basic income", practical forms, tools and mechanisms of its application on the essential aspects of the life of people, on the expected improvement in their standards and quality of life and the sustainability of the state and society. It will contribute to formation of the scientific, organizational, instrumental and documentary basis for implementation of pilot projects at the regional level, where transitional forms of universal basic income relevant to Russia can be tested. Testing UBI in Russia is of a particular relevance because of the widespread precarious employment, high poverty rates and excessive socio-economic inequality in our country.
According to the previously developed typology of Russian regions by the criteria of population quality, the regions were divided into ten groups. A detailed analysis of each group allows determining possible ways to improve the quality of the population in the Russian regions. This article begins to present the cycle of such studies with the analysis of three smallest groups: the first group includes Moscow and St. Petersburg, the second — the Republic of Dagestan, the Republic of Ingushetia, the Chechen Republic, the third — Nenets, Khanty-Mansi, Yamalo-Nenets autonomous okrugs and the Republic of Sakha (Yakutia). The first group of regions is the most prosperous in terms of quality characteristics of the population, here the main problem is the low natural growth of the population. The specificity of the North Caucasus republics in this aspect lies in high indicators of population quality with low material living standards that contradicts the previously statistically confirmed hypothesis of strong impact of quality of life on population quality. The conclusion has been made about high importance of national culture and traditions in these regions. At the same time, comparison of these republics among themselves has shown that traditions in some of them are weakening, and more attention should be paid to economic factors — monetary income, poverty and unemployment rates. These problems in the North Caucasus regions are in line with the theory of multilevel economy, and their solution requires restructuring of the economy on the basis of its technological and technical re-equipment. In the third group, on the contrary, high monetary income is accompanied by poor qualitative characteristics of the population, especially by rates of alcoholism and drug addiction. These phenomena are correlated with the level of unemployment, the growth of which is caused not only by the global crisis processes in the development of the oil and gas sector, but also by the depletion of highly profitable deposits in the Northern regions of the country, the need to develop hard-to-reach and hardly removable sources of oil and gas. The solution may be to change the structure of the economy of these regions in the direction of development of the natural raw materials processing sector.
The aim of this work is to analyze the financial situation and the level of social support received by families with children in Ulyanovsk oblast on the basis of the data from household survey conducted in Ulyanovsk oblast. The study showed that the poverty rate among the surveyed households with children under 18 is significantly higher than the total poverty rate among the households. Many families with children cannot afford buying goods and services they need. In order to maintain their consumption level, a significant proportion of families with children have to take out loans. Analysis of the survey data shows that the coverage of families with children by social benefits is quite high. At the same time, even among the poor households with children, one quarter of households does not receive any social benefits. The surveyed families with children noted difficulties faced by them in obtaining information about social benefits and in collecting necessary documents, long waiting in queues when applying for benefits. The calculations show that provision of regional benefits, including targeted regional benefits, reduces the poverty rate among households with children only slightly. In general, regional benefits are more likely to reduce the extreme poverty of household with children. The analysis presented in the article allows determining possible directions for improving the social support system in Ulyanovsk oblast.
