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Бедность и бедные в современной России
The chapter analyzes the impact of various socio -demographic characteristics of the individual to the risk of poverty. It is demostrated that the certain features are not just factors of poverty, along with the structural characteristics of individuals, but their role is great. Still, they are mostly complementary and corrective, rather than the main causes of poverty/ and the last is mostly determined by position in the labor market . Exceptions are the cases of very high dependency load and belonging to single-parent or multi-children families .
In theory, a poverty line can be defined as the cost of a common (inter-personally comparable) utility level across a population. But how can one know if this holds in practice? For groups sharing common consumption needs but facing different prices, the theory of revealed preference can be used to derive testable implications of utility consistency knowing only the "poverty bundles" and their prices. Heterogeneity in needs calls for extra information. We argue that subjective welfare data offer a credible means of testing utility consistency across different needs groups. A case study of Russia's official poverty lines shows how revealed preference tests can be used in conjunction with qualitative information on needs heterogeneity. The results lead us to question the utility consistency of Russia's official poverty lines.
Eighteen papers, from an international, interdisciplinary workshop on measuring empowerment organized by the World Bank's Poverty Reduction and Economic Management network in 2003, address the challenge of evaluating empowerment and its contribution to development effectiveness. Papers focus on a framework for evaluating how empowerment influences the development process and for analyzing the causal forces on empowerment, with cases from Latin America; women's empowerment as a variable in international development; measuring women's empowerment; an analysis of household and family dynamics; psychological empowerment and subjective well-being; an investigation of the relationship between income mobility and perceptions of subjective well-being related to that mobility, using panel data from Peru and Russia; self-rated power and welfare in Russia; applying Q methodology to empowerment; analytical issues in measuring empowerment at the community and local levels; peace, conflict, and empowerment; measuring empowerment at the community level; mixing qualitative and econometric methods; assessing empowerment at the national level in Eastern Europe and Central Asia; the CIVICUS Civil Society Index; empowerment as a positive-sum game; democracy, good governance, and empowerment; and measuring democratic governance. Contributors include economists, anthropologists, sociologists, psychologists, demographers, and political scientists. Narayan is Senior Adviser in the Poverty Reduction and Economic Management Network of the World Bank. Index.
In this paper we use the rich set of unit-level data from the most recent Egyptian household surveys (1995 – 1996 and 1999 – 2000) to assess changes in poverty and inequality between 1995 and 2000. The study analysis is based on the new methodology of constructing household-specific poverty lines that account for the differences in regional prices, as well as differences in the consumption preferences and size and age composition of poor households. The results show that average household expenditures rose in the second half of the 1990s and the poverty rate fell from 20% to less than 17%. In addition to the ongoing divide in the urban-rural standard of living, a new geographical/regional divide emerged in the late 1990s. Poverty was found predominantly among less-educated individuals, particularly those working in agriculture and construction, and among seasonal and occasional workers. These groups could suffer the most from the slowing economic growth evident after 1999 – 2000.
This chapter addresses the relationship between class, family and social welfare policies by analysing the construction of the identity category of ‘unfortunate families’ in popular scientific discourses, governmental policy documents and discourses of social services, and by examining how those labelled as ‘unfortunate’ negotiate this identity conferred to them. The chapter shows that gender and class are closely intertwined in the production of this identity, as it is single mothers who are primarily categorized as ‘unfortunate’. In our analysis we draw on multiple sources of data. First, we analyse in-depth and focus group interviews with service providers and clients and participant observation data from a number of Russian cities. Second, we analyse various government documents and social advertisements, mass media materials, social policy and social work textbooks, and popular scientific texts published during the 1990s-2000s.
This chapter addresses the relationship between class, family and social welfare policies by analysing the construction of the identity category of ‘unfortunate families’ (neblagopoluchnye sem’i) in popular scientific discourses, governmental policy documents and discourses of social services, and by examining how those labelled as ‘unfortunate’ negotiate this identity conferred to them. The chapter shows that gender and class are closely intertwined in the production of this identity, as it is single mothers who are primarily categorised as ‘unfortunate’. In our analysis we draw on multiple sources of data. First, we analyse in-depth and focus group interviews with service providers and clients and participant observation data from a number of Russian cities. Second, we analyse various government documents and social advertisements, mass media materials, social policy and social work textbooks, and popular scientific texts published during the 1990–2010s. This chapter begins with a review of Western theoretical discussions of class in the context of family and welfare in order to see how Russia fits into these debates. Western class analysis was considered irrelevant in the Soviet Union due to the supposedly classless nature of advanced socialism, but the transition to a market economy in the 1990s and the new kind of class society it engendered have made these discussions topical in Russia. In the second section of this chapter we offer a brief description of the main principles of the Soviet and post-Soviet welfare ideologies and the policies towards families. The following sections examine how popular scientific discourses, governmental policy documents and social advertisements, and social service providers construct class with the concept of the unfortunate family. The last section preceding the conclusions analyses how mothers labelled as unfortunate negotiate this stigmatised identity.
A survey investigating the risk of falling into poverty in Russia shows that after improvements in the level of well-being of the Russian population during the past decade, the situation has grown relatively worse during the current economic crisis and for the poor the situation will continue to worsen at an accelerated pace.
The paper examines the structure, governance, and balance sheets of state-controlled banks in Russia, which accounted for over 55 percent of the total assets in the country's banking system in early 2012. The author offers a credible estimate of the size of the country's state banking sector by including banks that are indirectly owned by public organizations. Contrary to some predictions based on the theoretical literature on economic transition, he explains the relatively high profitability and efficiency of Russian state-controlled banks by pointing to their competitive position in such functions as acquisition and disposal of assets on behalf of the government. Also suggested in the paper is a different way of looking at market concentration in Russia (by consolidating the market shares of core state-controlled banks), which produces a picture of a more concentrated market than officially reported. Lastly, one of the author's interesting conclusions is that China provides a better benchmark than the formerly centrally planned economies of Central and Eastern Europe by which to assess the viability of state ownership of banks in Russia and to evaluate the country's banking sector.
The results of cross-cultural research of implicit theories of innovativeness among students and teachers, representatives of three ethnocultural groups: Russians, the people of the North Caucasus (Chechens and Ingushs) and Tuvinians (N=804) are presented. Intergroup differences in implicit theories of innovativeness are revealed: the ‘individual’ theories of innovativeness prevail among Russians and among the students, the ‘social’ theories of innovativeness are more expressed among respondents from the North Caucasus, Tuva and among the teachers. Using the structural equations modeling the universal model of values impact on implicit theories of innovativeness and attitudes towards innovations is constructed. Values of the Openness to changes and individual theories of innovativeness promote the positive relation to innovations. Results of research have shown that implicit theories of innovativeness differ in different cultures, and values make different impact on the attitudes towards innovations and innovative experience in different cultures.
The paper examines the principles for the supervision of financial conglomerates proposed by BCBS in the consultative document published in December 2011. Moreover, the article proposes a number of suggestions worked out by the authors within the HSE research team.
We address the external effects on public sector efficiency measures acquired using Data Envelopment Analysis. We use the health care system in Russian regions in 2011 to evaluate modern approaches to accounting for external effects. We propose a promising method of correcting DEA efficiency measures. Despite the multiple advantages DEA offers, the usage of this approach carries with it a number of methodological difficulties. Accounting for multiple factors of efficiency calls for more complex methods, among which the most promising are DMU clustering and calculating local production possibility frontiers. Using regression models for estimate correction requires further study due to possible systematic errors during estimation. A mixture of data correction and DMU clustering together with multi-stage DEA seems most promising at the moment. Analyzing several stages of transforming society’s resources into social welfare will allow for picking out the weak points in a state agency’s work.