Specificity of Subjective Well-Being of Russians from Different Types of Settlements

This article analyses the specificity of subjective social well-being in the context of settlement inequalities. The empirical basis of the analysis is the data of all-Russian representative studies conducted by the Institute of Sociology of the Federal Research Center of the Russian Academy of Sciences. It is shown that over the past two decades, significant shifts have occurred in the mass consciousness of Russians in terms of perception of various indicators of social well-being. This has led to the formation of a stable and generally harmonious picture of subjective social well-being among residents of all types of settlements. It was also recorded that the indicators related to basic needs (assessments of food, clothing, housing conditions, material security and health) and the social microworld (assessments of family relationships, opportunities for communicating with friends, professional fulfilment, obtaining the necessary education, organising recreation during vacations, leisure time, as well as the situation at work) were perceived more positively by the majority of respondents than the components of social well-being characterising the specifics of the local community (assessments of the place of residence, the position occupied in society, the level of personal safety and the environmental situation) and the conditional "macroworld" (assessments of the availability of the Internet and digital technologies, the level of social security in the event of job loss, as well as opportunities for expressing political views, receiving the necessary medical care and influencing one's own life). The article shows that the subjective social well-being of villagers in comparison with city dwellers still differs for the worse, with the exception of the perception of the block of characteristics of social well-being associated with the specifics of the local community, i.e. place of residence. In this regard, according to the results of the 2023 study, rural residents outperformed city dwellers for the first time. In general, a noticeable trend was revealed towards smoothing out settlement differences in the perception of various aspects of social well-being, primarily due to higher rates of improvement in subjective assessments among rural residents. It was also noted that the problematic background in the perception of social well-being is formed due to the relative dissatisfaction of Russians with certain aspects of life. They are primarily associated with the skeptical assessment by residents of all populated areas of the level of social security of an individual in the event of job loss, dissatisfaction among the population of the centres of the constituent entities of the Russian Federation with the environmental situation there, as well as persistent problems with access to the necessary medical care in rural areas.