Social Policy as an Instrument to Offset the Negative Impact of Inequality on Subjective Well-being

Among the goals social policy pursues there is a particular one which welfare states are exceptionally interested in. The goal is to decrease the inequality rate, overcome poverty and, consequently, boost subjective well-being of population. The question is does social policy in fact offsets negative effects of inequality? There is still lack of theoretical arguments and empirical evidence of that, yet social policy, inequality and subjective well-being research have a long-lasting legacy in many fields like political science, economics and sociology. The given research is supposed to provide both theoretical argument and empirical evidence for the question in the context of Russian regions. I assume that in regions with relatively low average household income and higher inequality rate social policy alleviates negative effects of inequality on subjective well-being by redistributing public goods (e.g. healthcare service, education and tangible social benefits) to high risk groups.