Russians who believe they are extremely poor and Russians who are objectively very poor are, in fact, different people. According to Kommersant citing a research by the Higher School of Economics (HSE), while the retired consider themselves struck by poverty, in reality the poorest are young people aged 18 to 40.
HSE expert Ekaterina Slobodenyuk analyzed poverty in our country and found that the real poor people in Russia are those under 40, for trivial and obvious reasons: a weak labor market and the fact that they have minor children.
Overall, the extremely poor account for over 8% of the Russians. Their wages are around RUR 7.5K ($117), which is half the median income in our country. People who are subjectively poor (consider themselves as such) make up 4%. Mostly they are non-working retirees. There is a 0.5-percent overlap between the objectively and subjectively poor people.
The HSE expert concludes that fixing the situation will require increasing the employment rate and improving the quality of healthcare.