The Deprivation Rate for Households with Children

One of the key and not yet overcome problems of Russian society is the poverty of families with children. This problem is still identified as unresolved both in scientific publications and at the state level, considering what tasks the President sets before the authorities in his message. The relevance of the research topic is due to both the contradictions that arise when applying different approaches to the definition and measurement of poverty, and the ever-changing portrait of poverty of families with children, together with modern conditions and the introduction of new measures to support them, as well as the need to detail the modern portrait of poverty of families with children to form relevant recommendations for the introduction of additional targeted assistance to those in need in order to improve their conditions. Also, the scientific novelty of the work is due to the need for relevant information on the current level of deprivation poverty of families with children to monitor the dynamics of their situation and improve the functioning of existing mechanisms of social policy. For this reason, the aim of this study is to assess the level and nature of deprivation poverty of families with children, as well as to identify, if possible, other non-monetary indicators of their disadvantage. In this regard, the object of the study are Russians living in families with children (including the children themselves). In the course of the work, the following hypotheses were tested: 1. Internet access is a significant marker of deprivation for modern society (Leidig et al., 2015). The verification method is analysis of secondary sources, distribution by indicator at the RLMS of the Higher School of Economics. 2. Families with children are a less deprived category of the population, in particular compared to pensioners (Pishnyak, Popova, 2011; Slobodenyuk, 2014, 2019). We intend to verify on the basis of data on the proportion of those falling into the poor, on the proportion of people simultaneously suffering a significant amount of total deprivation, on the significance of deprivation for the respective families. 3. Income poor may not fall into the category of deprivation poor due to a large credit and debt burden. 4. The degree of deprivation and the proportion of the poor (according to the deprivation approach) in large families will be higher than in families with 1 and 2 children. We make this assumption based on the results of previous studies. And also recommendations were offered to support families with children based on the analysis. To achieve these goals, the results of the 27th wave (2018) of the Russian Monitoring of the Economic Situation and Health of Russia (RLMS HSE) were used as an empirical database, based on which descriptive and cluster data analysis methods were used as key tools.