About well-being of the Russians

Abstract

According to works of some economists and speeches of some politicians Russia is transforming from totalitarism to market economy. As the consequences of the process there should be overcoming or decreasing of social-economic polarization in a society. But we have quite another situation in Russia. Basing on the results of seven waves of All- Russia sociological monitoring we see that from December 1992 till June 1995 self-evaluation of the Russians' well-being is not changed, or changed within a very small limits. Almost every third has no borrow even for everyday shopping, about the same part of the respondents has enough money for everyday shopping, but even to buy clothes is a problem.These two groups of respondents form almost 70% of population. And only 6% of population are so-called "new rich".
In other words, the available positive moves in well-being of the Russians are very small and they don't exceed the error of the sample (3%).