> With the usual caveats about not trusting official Russian income
> statistics, I would say this is mostly true.
> The middle class has been increasing in size as people from the lower
> classes join its ranks, but middle class purchasing power has been
dropping
> due to inflation.
That "thirty million Russians, or one in five in a country of 145 million, survive on less than $2 dollars a day" is perhaps misleading? What are the PPP based average wage levels?
Ulhas