Russians Anxious About Low Salaries, Living Standards

Russians believe that the most serious problems that the country faces now are connected with low salaries and living standards (24%), the state of economy (21%) and the current social policy (18%), a survey conducted by the Russian Public Opinion Research Center shows.

“Low salaries and low standard of living as a whole have been leading the list of problematic issues for three months in a row, with 24% of Russians naming them (against 18% this past January and 14% in July 2016). Each fifth respondent (21%) is concerned with the state of economy (16% at the beginning of the year). Social policy is in top three: 18% in July (it was twice as little, 9%, a year ago),” the report says, Tass reported.

Russians also named the state of health care (17%), unemployment (14%), educational problems (12%) and low pensions (12%), inflation and corruption (each tenth respondent), as well as housing utilities issues (8%) among the current domestic problems. “The importance of most issues on the top ten problem rating for July is higher than a year ago, except for inflation,” the research center reported.

“The problem rating is an indicator for discrepancy between reality and expectations, which shows the major deprivation points that lead to requests to authority. The most acute issue today is the problem of material state, low salaries and the low level of life, which aggravate the second core issue—social support.

These data add to the image, the contours of which can be seen from our other polls: the share of the poor has doubled as compared to 2014, and the price growth remains the main fear,” Head of Social Modeling and Forecasting Practice of the VCIOM Research Department Yulia Baskakova said, commenting on the poll results.

The nation’s leading polling agency conducted the poll on July 27-August 1 in 130 communities of 46 Russian regions, having questioned 1,600 people.

Meanwhile, the Russian economy has grown by 2.5% in the second quarter of 2017 compared to the same period last year, according to the Russian Federal State Statistics Service, Rosstat, Sputnik reported.

According to Rosstat, Russia’s GDP has been growing since the end of 2016. The economy is recovering despite the introduction of economic sanctions against Moscow by western countries, German Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung newspaper noted.

“Despite the sanctions and the collapse of oil prices, the Russian economy is growing as fast as ever in recent years,” the newspaper wrote, citing data from Rosstat.