LABOUR MARKET INSTITUTIONS IN THE PUBLIC ADMINISTRATION SYSTEM AND THE PROBLEM OF THE WORKING POOR

Poverty remains one of the pressing social problems of the modern world, and Russia is no exception. The most common cause of poverty is a shortage of income; however, employment and wages do not always guarantee that a family will escape poverty. The purpose of this paper is to systematize foreign and Russian scientific research devoted to the study of the causes and mechanisms of the emergence of the “working poor”. It presents a comprehensive view of poverty as a labor market problem, which is based on both the lack of jobs and their poor quality. Special attention is paid to the relationship between poverty and certain labor market institutions – employment protection legislation and minimum wages. In countries where the level of employment and involvement of households in employment is traditionally high (including Russia), the quality of employment and, above all, the reduction of low-paid employment becomes a fundamental issue of poverty reduction policy. However, in this case it should be taken into account that many low-paid employed people live in “non-poor” households. The opposite is also true: many poor households do not have low-paid workers, their poverty is due to other reasons not related to the labor market (first of all, the composition and size of the household). Therefore, as the experience of many countries shows, raising the minimum wage, as a rule, cannot be the only tool to reduce poverty.