Основные модели социально-экономической адаптации в разных стратах российского общества

Terra Economicus. 2019. Т. 17. № 3. С. 128–145.

Karavay A.

The main issue of the article is an analysis of the adaptive behavior of the modern Russian population. The author deals with the data of the eighth wave of the all-Russian monitoring study by the Institute of Sociology of the Russian Academy of Sciences, 2018. As the author states, eleven adaptation strategies can be distinguished. Their specificities depend on the degree of people’s activities, their material and nonmaterial resources capacity, place of residence, age, and professional characteristics. The paper argues that, when choosing adaptation strategies, Russian people act rationally and try to maximize the utility of available resources. If a lack of resources occurs, people increase the work- or debt load. At the same time, their adaptation activity is restrained by the specifics of the local and global socio-economic institutions. The place in the stratification hierarchy influences the choice of an adaptation strategy and its effectiveness in two aspects – the ability to accumulate assets necessary for adaptation, and the sufficiency of these assets to reduce the risks inherent in the life of a particular individual. Representatives of the upper strata can choose the most comfortable strategy for themselves, and the Russians from the middle, and especially the lower strata almost do not have any choice of such strategies. As a result, the uneven distribution of life chances and risks in modern Russian society leads to unequal opportunities in the selection of successful strategies affording to maintain and increase material wellbeing, which leads to further growth of social inequalities. At the same time, the nonconsistency of the status position (relatively high rates of life chances and risks at the same time) leads to a desire to change the institutional environment, what in Russian conditions means the appearance of an idea of internal migration or emigration. This idea is the most common for the most prosperous part of society.

Keywords: behavioral patterns, поведенческие паттерны, socio-economic adaptation, социально-экономическая адаптация, social inequalities, adaptation strategies, жизненные шансы, life chances, социальные неравенства, adaptation resources, адаптационные стратегии, адаптационные ресурсы