The Public Opinion Foundation conducted a survey on how Russian families plan their family budgets. What is particularly interesting here is that such statistics are regularly collected by Rosstat; thus, there is a rare opportunity to compare what Russians say about themselves with official figures. Let's look at some details.

According to the State Statistical Service, Russians spend on average about a third of their income on food – 33% in 2005. At the same time, in recent years the share of food in the family budget has been steadily falling – from half (49% in 1995, 48% in 2000) to a third. This can be considered an indicator of growing prosperity: the poor usually spend a larger part of their income on food than the rich. We need to add another 3% for transportation and the noticeably increased expenses for housing and utilities in recent years (3% in 1995, 4% in 2000, 8% in 2005). Total: the average Russian, according to Rosstat, spent 44% of his budget on everyday routine expenses in 2005.

What did citizens tell sociologists? Only a quarter (26%) of Russian families spend less than half of their income on everyday needs. 32% spend from half to three-quarters of their budget on them, another 34% - even more. How this situation is aggregated into statistics presented by Rosstat is not entirely clear. Of course, the comparison is not entirely correct: Rosstat takes into account the expenses of all residents of the country, and FOM asked questions only to people living in families. Well, perhaps single people spend much less on food, transport and housing than family people.

25% of those polled by FOM said that their family income had increased over the past year, and 16% said that it had decreased. The rest did not feel any changes. According to Rosstat, the total income of the country's population increased by as much as a quarter in a year (from 10,976.3 billion rubles in 2004 to 13,667.8 in 2005). It is possible, of course, that all this additional money was earned by single people or that all this growth came from those 25% of families that felt an improvement (then, taking into account those whose incomes decreased, their budgets should have more than doubled on average). However, the feeling of some discrepancy remains. However, although only a quarter of those polled say that they began to earn more, as many as three quarters (73%) say that they began to spend more. So it is quite possible that citizens are simply playing poor. And yet the overall picture does not create the feeling of an explosive growth in income.

It is extremely interesting to see who, according to FOM, has benefited from the income growth. The young – aged 18 to 35 – feel their well-being grow significantly more than others, 29% of them have noticed an increase (in the group over 55, this figure is only 19%), as well as the educated – 31% in the group of people with higher education (and only 15% with less than secondary education). The rich are getting richer, and the poor are getting poorer – in the highest-income group, 36% report an increase in family income and only 12% a decrease, while in the lowest-income group, 16% have noticed an increase and 23% a decrease. However, the word “rich” should be put in quotation marks here: only a quarter of respondents (23%) report that in their families, per capita income exceeds the “large” sum of 4,000 rubles per month. So, it seems, there is still room to grow.

RULES OF THE GAME: There is room to grow