Page 49 - RusRPTNov20

Nearly one in seven Russians live below the poverty line. ​In the second quarter of 2020, the number of Russian citizens, whose revenues sank below the minimum subsistence level was 1.3mn higher than the same period last year, and reached 19.9mn, according to the Russian Federal State Statistics Service. So, some 13.6% of citizens are poor now, which translates to nearly one in seven Russians, Vedomosti writes.
Former Russian Prime Minister and President Dmitry Medvedev announced that Russia might introduce a universal basic income (UBI) for all Russians post-pandemic worth three-times the subsistence level. Medvedev says the pandemic has caused him to reassess how the government deals with the financial security of citizens. The UBI is an overarching social security system in, which the government provides a certain amount of money to every single citizen each month. The aim of UBI is to ensure that everyone has enough money for basic subsistence living. Andrey Kutepov, the Head of Russia's Federation Council Committee on Economic Policy, has also suggested a UBI system and wrote to presidential assistant Maxim Oreshkin suggesting that the country adopts UBI as an experiment providing each Russian with an income three times the subsistence minimum. This amounts to just over RUB35,000 ($460) a month. Adjusted for purchasing power parity, that would equate to $1,361 at OECD rates.
The spring quarantine cost the Russians 16mn average salaries, and this is only according to official data​. The real losses are definitely greater, and the statistics do not see the most affected. For two months of the most stringent quarantine measures - in April and May - Russians lost RUB800bn in income in the form of salaries, the study "The Price of Quarantine" by the National Credit Ratings Agency (NKR) showed. This is about 16 million average monthly salaries, RBC notes. In the second quarter, year-on-year, they decreased by 9.5%, in April-May by 16.5%. This is equivalent to the loss of RUB802bn in the wage bill for two spring months and another RUB39bn in June. The loss of wages was mainly due not to layoffs, but due to the underemployment characteristic of Russia.
This is confirmed by other data: during the pandemic, underemployment exceeded official unemployment, and there are now 4.6 million “partially unemployed” in the country. 45% of the quarterly losses of the entire country were incurred by three regions with the largest workforce and high wages: Moscow (-RUB243bn), Petersburg (-RUB69.8bn) and the Moscow region (-RUB65.4bn).
The estimate does not include the loss of officially unemployed Russians (including self-employed), of whom there are 13 million people in the country. Losses in official wages correspond in order to the government's aid to support families with children and the unemployed (RUB770bn). But most of them (RUB640bn) fell on families with children, RBC notes. This means that part of even working citizens were left without any help.
49 ​RUSSIA Country Report​ November 2020 www.intellinews.com