Anton Tabakh: Fighting Poverty

Anton Tabah Alexey Kudrin in the State Duma duma.gov.ru

The poverty level in Russia remains high, said the head of the Accounts Chamber of the Russian Federation Alexei Kudrin. Meanwhile, the Cabinet of Ministers claims that in half a year only the number of poor ones decreased by 1.1 million people, and intends to rule measures to reduce the poverty level.

Speaking in the State Duma with the conclusion on the budget for 2017, the Chairman of the Accounts Chamber noted that 19.3 million people, that is, 13.2% of the country's population have income below the subsistence level.

At the same time, Kudrin said that the real incomes of the population this year will grow for the first time since 2013, the Interfax news agency reports. According to the head of the joint venture, "in eight months they grew by 2.6%." Prior to this, for four years, income has decreased and decreased by a total of 11%.

According to Tatyana Golikova, Deputy Prime Minister, the Russian government will soon prepare a package of additional measures to reduce poverty in 2019. She called the national goal to reduce the level of poverty.

Tatyana Golikova / AGN "Moscow" / Photo: Ivanko Igor

“Now we see that those measures that are so far do not give us the opportunity to double a decrease, so we are currently working with the expert community both under the Demography project and, if necessary, performing a poverty reduction indicator by half. And we assume that in 2019, both according to the Demography project and for the national goal of reducing poverty, we will release with additional measures to support our citizens, ”the Golikova statement quoted the TASS news agency.

Speaking about the tendency to reduce poverty, the Deputy Prime Minister emphasized that over the first half of this year, the number of poor decreased by 1.1 million people.

About how you can reduce the level of poverty, about what resources it will require and how can I get funds, if possible, with Polit.ru spoke Anton Tabakh, the main economist of the RA, Associate Professor of the Higher School of Economics and Moscow State University.

Anton Tabah

“We have quite a lot of resources to combat poverty - the budget will even swell taking into account the neutralization of oil revenues. And funds to combat poverty can be taken from various sources. What directions are there?

For example. We have no problem of unemployment as such, but there is a problem of low -quality jobs, and there is a problem of single -industry towns and the like. In both cases, it is more or less known what to do: there are all kinds of programs with the participation of state and non -state corporations to create jobs. This is the first measure to combat poverty.

In addition, a law has already been adopted to increase unemployment benefits to the minimum wage. This, on the one hand, can pull out part of the unemployment into the light, because so far the unemployed often simply did not have an incentive to register; On the other hand, those who still register will have more money on their hands. Thus, this is the second measure of poverty decrease.

The third measure, which helps to reduce the level of poverty, is educational programs, increasing skills, promoting new technologies. Here the results are less obvious, but also more or less known what to do.

Opening an educational project for the elderly / AGN "Moscow" / Photo: Kiselev Sergey

Where exactly to get the money? Part of the federal budgets, partly from the regional. Regional budgets are now in a noticeably better position than were three years ago. And partly the fight against poverty does not require much money - institutional measures are required more likely. Do you have to redraw the budget for this? Naturally, it will have to-the budget is still a document. But in principle, on this issue, I can rather quote the cat Matroskin from the cartoon “Three of the Prostokvashino”: we don’t have enough money, we don’t have enough mind.

If we talk about institutional measures, then they are needed different for different situations. The problem of poverty in different constituent entities of the Russian Federation has a different nature. In Moscow, for example, egregious poverty is among migrants, but this is a problem of not the federal government - there are rather police measures, migration control measures here. And the second obvious problem is the problem of a low salary of federal employees in Moscow.

This topic was repeatedly raised by Moscow mayor Sergei Sobyanin. Well, apparently, there will be some allowances for large cities, as it is in any major country with inequality, in China, in the States, in Brazil. In the regions, other problems are, for example, the problem of large families and inappropriate children's benefits. It is clear that the manuals need to be raised - but, also, we put it, it is necessary to solve the problem of kindergartens. In some regions it was completely resolved, in some-no. This is also in a way institutional problems.

Family Kindergarten / AGN "Moscow" / Photo: Ermakov Dmitry

There is a very wide range of reasons, it is impossible to briefly describe the situation as "we have all the poor, because something." This poverty is very different.

Is it possible to understand, due to which in six months, our number of poor decreased so noticeably, by more than a million people? Well, this happened in a combination of reasons, as often happens. Firstly, they began to pay more in budget organizations. Some of their employees fell into the category of the poor, and after the increase, they statistically dropped out of there. Someone may have left our world. Someone retired-of those who did not legally participate in the labor market and, as it were, had no income before, and then he began to receive them.

Well, and a certain number of poor are poor only on paper, that is, they do not have official income. Accordingly, measures like the legalization of self-employed to some extent will also statistically remove this factor, ”said Anton Tabakh.

See also: The World Bank included the Russian Federation in the three leaders in the inequality of the regions Rosstat noted the growth of real income and salaries of Russians Rosstat for the first time in five years recorded a decrease in poverty level Simon Licky Putin. 4.5 hours of communication with the people