Risks of poverty in the modern Russian conditions

Poverty acts as an indicator of insufficiency and deficit of economic resources of the population; its boundaries serve as a demarcation line between people's adaptation to social and economic changes and their maladjustment. The construction of a socio-demographic portrait of the poor, reflecting its recent dynamics and the current state helps identify the key risks of poverty and their stability in the modern Russian conditions. It is difficult for certain social categories to adapt. The specificity of socio-economic differentiation of the population in the modern Russian society is connected with the persistence of the stratification profile defined by the unequal distribution of money income among the population groups during the period of reforms. Raised standards of living of most population in the 2000s led to the drastic reduction in absolute poverty, defined by the boundaries of income below the subsistence minimum. However, nowadays, according to the objective indicators of the income amount, the tenth part of the Russians is considered as the poor. The population's income is still insufficient; it testifies the presence of poverty risks for some categories of the population in the modern Russian conditions. The analysis of the dynamics and state of the objective sources of poverty shows that the high poverty rates are observed in small towns (with the population being equal to 50-100 thousand inhabitants and up to 50 thousand people) and rural settlements and refer to children and youth under 30, the unemployed and economically inactive population. Besides, the working poor employed in industries get low wages.