The concept of "middle class", although it has the same semantic load for different countries, implies a different level of income for each of them. This stratum between the poor and the rich in each country also has a different quantitative expression and is an indicator of economic well-being, therefore it is of interest as a criterion of the state of the economy in Russia.
There is no universal definition for such a concept as the "middle class", which, however, is often used by sociologists and economists as a statistical indicator. What meaning is put into it depends on a particular country, its political and economic situation. The social stratum of the population, which can be called the Russian middle class, has undoubtedly become more prosperous in recent years, but its financial condition remains very unstable.
The living standards of the Russian middle class are much lower than those of the middle class in the West, and there is no hope that they will be the same in the foreseeable future. If we focus on the external signs of belonging to the middle class, adopted in the EU countries, then the Russian owners of smartphones, iPods, digital cameras and other signs of high purchasing power, in fact, do not belong to the middle class - their incomes are higher.
When determining the level of income, comparing the Russian middle class with the European one, it should be borne in mind that the cost of living in Russia is still lower. For recalculation, you can use such a parameter as purchasing power parity, which, using the IMF data, can be taken to be approximately equal to 28%. This coefficient should be used to increase the incomes of the middle class when assessing them in order to get a real picture.
For many years, experts from the Higher School of Economics have been studying the number of people who can be classified as the middle class and the level of their incomes. According to their estimates, today the pass to the stratum, which is called the “Russian middle class,” is the amount of monthly income per person in the family of at least 30,000 rubles. In addition, a family belonging to this social category must already be provided with their own housing, have a car and a bank account.
A couple of years ago, only 20-25% of Russian families fell into this category of the population. Currently, experts estimate this value at 27%, i.e. we can say that there is no noticeable increase in the growth of incomes of the population. As for the professional activities of those who belong to this stratum, traditionally these are those who are associated with the oil and gas industry, work in the foreign exchange sector, in the electric power industry and in railway transport. Recently, among those who can be attributed to the middle class, the share of officials and the military has been increasing.
