Monetary and Non-Monetary Inequalities in Modern Russian Society: Dynamics of the Recent Decade

The article examines the monetary and non-monetary inequalities dynamics in Russian society over the last decade through the prism of social stratification models using the RLMS HSE data. It is shown that the general configurations of monetary and non-monetary inequalities share similar characteristics and similar trends. As a result, Russian society today is not only a society of dominant middle strata, both in terms of income and quality of life, but is also characterized by a further dynamic of “median averaging” in the mass strata of the population. The middle stratum in terms of quality of life is larger than the median group in terms of income: more than two thirds of the population are now in a very similar position in terms of the qualitative characteristics of their daily lives, regardless of the fact that their income levels may differ. The configuration of non-monetary inequalities is characterized by greater volatility in the shares of the polar groups , which are more responsive to external changes in the socio-economic context, while the configuration of monetary inequality (assessed using the relative approach based on median income), is characterized by greater monotonicity and a slower rate of change over the last 10 years. In the long run, however, the configuration of income inequality has also changed quite significantly: the dominance of the median group became characteristic only in the last decade. At the micro level, the position in the income hierarchy is not strictly linked to the respective position in the quality of life hierarchy. The results show that the task of reducing inequality is not trivial.