Why families with children in Russia are poorer than childless

2024 Author: Seth Attwood | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-16 15:55

Children are an expensive pleasure, a slow, multi-year investment that negatively affects the parents' budget for at least two decades. It is not surprising that families with children in Russia are poorer than childless.

With children - means poor?

In August 2019, updated statistics were published on child poverty in one of the richest countries in the world - Russia. Rosstat, which after the change of head became one of the country's main newsmakers, reported that 26% of Russian children (under 18) live in families with incomes below the subsistence level, which is twice as much as in the country as a whole, excluding age. Simply put, families with children are very poor, especially those with many children, where the poverty rate reaches 50%.

Of course, the figure is exaggerated. In Russia, a country with rare sunbursts of legality in a dense-shaded economy, showing off as poor and getting benefits is not that hard. This is especially true of the North Caucasus, a region traditionally with many children.

There are very kind officials there: they stamp out disability on an industrial scale (every 22nd resident of Chechnya is a disabled child, in Ingushetia - every 35th, in Moscow - every 315th), and they are always ready to support low security with state benefits, which in any Ivanovo region is very difficult to achieve

So the data for the south of Russia should be divided several times. But, of course, this practically does not diminish the general problem of poverty in families with children.

Conspiracy theory

In 2017, a landmark figure was reached - the total capital of the 200 richest citizens of Russia exceeded both the gold and foreign exchange reserves of the Central Bank and all monetary savings of individuals in banks. Two hundred people - and all of Russia. They now have more than $ 500 billion - for comparison, it is planned to receive less than $ 10 billion annually from the heavy growth in VAT for the economy. And these are only more or less legal rich people, excluding our unmercenary ministers and deputies.

Against this background, it is not surprising that a curious, albeit completely unconvincing article with a tempting lead "Why the poverty of Russians is actually beneficial to the authorities" appeared in the opposition Novaya Gazeta. The author verbally proves that the poverty of the population is organized by the top, that no one else will make the "mistakes of the 2000s" when petrodollars began to flow to the people. The theses there are obviously pulled up to a previously prepared conclusion, but, most importantly, in pursuit of this conspiracy thesis, the journalist presents the authorities as some kind of sinister and united whole. Meanwhile, it is neither one nor the other. This is a set of not very smart people who come from the corrupted Soviet nomenklatura, inclined to maintain their own positions much more than to some kind of strategic achievements and insidious designs. The pinnacle of their intellectual achievements is the awkward elimination of Alexei Ulyukaev, everyday life is a recent reproach addressed to the young opposition by the fiery perestroika woman Ella Pamfilova in an effort to return the nineties, organized by her, Pamfilova's companions. That is, twitching and sclerosis.

Buying up children

The problem is that children from procreation and support in the future have become a tool for achieving ghostly momentary well-being. The seemingly useful and generous maternity capital program played a bad role in this.

It happened to the author of these lines to somehow state in one worthy professional team that maternity capital has become a kind of poverty trap: its substantial amount (453 thousand rubles), which exceeds the annual income of an average provincial family, is a powerful magnet. Conservative men objected vehemently, even declaring this point of view "Russophobia." But the women - only later, on the sidelines, - one after another came up and said that they personally knew those who made the decision about the child solely because of the maternity capital. Take off your blinders, idealistic gentlemen - this is just a form of body trade.

The problem with maternity capital is that it actually became an attempt to “buy demography”. The people who made the decision to introduce this measure, which develop and strengthen it, proceed from the absolutely unshakable belief that everything is bought and everything is sold. Low fertility? Anton Germanovich, give me a couple of million kids, please

Yes, money cannot be spent on immediate needs, but the very fact of the possibility of obtaining such an amount often knocks out all other thoughts from the head. When you work as a saleswoman in Skotoprigonievsk for 15 thousand and financially responsible for all the shortages, 453 thousand seem to be something completely transcendental. Moreover, the industry of cashing this money works great with us, American Google gives 116 thousand matches for the request "cash out maternity capital", and native Yandex - 7 million. Four times more than children are born in Russia in a year.

Let's be honest: there are no objective reasons for a high birth rate in our northern country, and maternity capital provokes the very poorest to become pregnant and, to be honest, the worst of all analyzing their actions are fellow citizens

Hence, by the way, the progress of the HIV epidemic: the number of detected infected people exceeded 1% of the population and almost equaled the number of births per year.

Children as a privilege

However, having children is very expensive; if the capital was issued in cash, almost all of them would fly out very quickly. In a consumer society, children are the main engine of "progress". We are taught that they must be successful, so we need to spend money on classes. On the sport. To support the kindergarten and school. For safety. And this is far from a specifically Russian problem, we just, as always, adopt the world experience without critical reflection, but with bestial seriousness.

And the PR and advertising of the "developed world" has long been directed towards children.

Example: violence and cruelty are taken out of sports in order to lower the age rating and lure the smallest spectators to the stands, sell children's merch, educate future fans from an early age who are ready to pay for tickets, TV broadcasts, baseball caps, phone cases with their beloved all their lives. logo

By the way, this is a very dangerous tendency: after the Second World War, sport has extremely successfully assumed the function of a platform for splashing out public negativity and hatred, and its “vegetarianization” will inevitably lead to the search for another sublimation. And it's good if sublimation …

It is clear that for the educated “middle class” that has achieved some kind of success in life, all this is quite obvious, which means that it does not have a special passion for childbirth.

There is no conspiracy of the authorities - there are generally not mountain snakes sitting there, but with rare exceptions, quite conscientious, but low-skilled people who are good at only selling and buying. There are low incomes of the population, complete uncertainty about the future, there is a mousetrap for the birth of a second child with cheese in the form of maternity capital, and now increased benefits

And until there is a stable growth in actual incomes, the Russian nation will still be left with a choice: to breed poor people or not to breed at all. Judging by the information for 2018 and the first half of 2019, the second of two evils wins. That is why now money has been thrown into the system again, now in the form of increased benefits for low-income families with children. The state again offers women to trade in their bodies, at a slightly increased rate.

Remembering the well-known wisdom: they are so afraid to give people a fishing rod that they are ready to bury them under the fish.