>From: Ulhas Joglekar <uvj at vsnl.com>
>
> > 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
>
Ulhas, I don't know the PPP off hand. I posted an article on here on the subject a while back -- you can probably find it if you're willing to waste a few hours or so trolling for it. :) Average _official_ wage in Moscow was $137 dollars a month last time I checked, though in reality its quite a bit higher: The Mayor's Office estimates it as $1,000 a month for an average family of three. In Russia overall it is much lower. I don't know about proces in the rest of the country, but a loaf of bread in Moscow costs about 20 US cents, as does a ride on the metro. The tram is free three-quarters of the time. A pair of jeans costs about US$20. A glass of domestic beer from a street kiosk is about 50 cents. Chicken or pork shishkabob with a couple of glasses of beer, which is where most people relax, will cost you maybe $5. Then of course there is a parallel world of existence for the rich or upper middle class, where things cost an order of magnitude higher. The Economist recently named Moscow the most expensive city in the world, but it was clear that they were looking at from the view of an upper- or upper-middle class Western lifestyle.
30 miliion Russians is about equal to the number of pensioners. Russia has an ageing population because of the decline in the birthrate since the last 80s (even with the drop in life expectancy). The average pension in Russia is about 2,000 rubles a month, or about $60, which is what you have to live on if you are elderly, unable to work and have no family to help you, so the figure may be accurate... It is nowhere near enough to live on, even giving the subsidies pensioners get, the free housing and virtually free utilities most Russians enjoy and the relatively low cost of living compared to the "developed" world (I hate that expression: Russia has cosmonauts! How is it not "developed"?).
Russia's poor are people in rural areas and people dependent on the state; who either receive pensions, work for the civil service (bureaucrats, teachers, policemen, etc.) or work for a state-run enterprise. These are the people you hear about having their wages delayed and being payed in barter, for example. On the other hand, things are made up for somewhat by perks given to large classes of people (like free public transportation for pensioners), subsidies given by state-run enterprises, daycare facilities such businesses have, housing and food they provide, etc.
BTW tne reason for the wage delays in the 90s is that the directors of subsidized state-run enterprises, which are largely inefficient but CANNOT be closed down, because that would create massive unemployment, refused to fire workers, because that would deprive them off the amenities such enterprises provide: Daycare, housing, schools, etc. Whole communities are based around those places. So they may have had, e.g., enough money to pay just the 25% of their workforce they actually needed, but, rather than letting the other 75% go, they slashed wages to everybody.
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