Deputy Prime Minister Tatyana Golikova said that 80% of the poor in the Russian Federation are families with children

In Russia, 80% of the population with income below the subsistence minimum are families with children, Vice Prime Minister Tatyana Golikova said during an interview with the Posner program on Channel One. According to her, the volume of missing resources in order to step over the living wage line is currently estimated at a little more than 700 billion rubles.

“We approximately understand how to close these problems, and are now aimed at making certain decisions that will allow our families to leave poverty, albeit not fast pace, but still to leave,” said Tatyana Golikova. Her words are given by Interfax .

According to Rosstat, the population of the Russian Federation with income below the subsistence minimum in the II quarter of 2020 increased by 1.3 million people compared to both the II quarter of 2019, and with the I quarter of 2020, and amounted to 19.9 million people. The poverty level increased to 13.5% against 12.7% in the II quarter of 2019 and 12.6% in the first quarter of 2020.

A year ago, even before the pandemic, Rosstat said that more than a quarter (26%) of children under the age of 18 live in families with a level of cash income below the subsistence level. The highest level of poverty - 52.2% - is observed among children who live in large families: households that had cash income close to the cost of living, fall below this line at the birth of children.

It was noted that it was children's poverty that forms a “trap of poverty” : children growing in poor families do not receive a decent education, full -fledged medical care and social services, but in the end they become outsiders in the labor market and cannot apply for a high pension. In addition, in comparison with other categories of the population, children are much more likely to experience deprivations related to economic difficulties. Experts, in turn, note that the policy of the Russian Federation is not aimed at overcoming poverty, including due to a high level of real inflation, increasing VAT and lack of growth in income among the population.