THE ROLE OF UNCONTROLLED FACTORS OF THE SOCIAL BACKGROUND IN THE FORMATION OF POVERTY: AN EMPIRICAL STUDY

Abstract

The relevance of this article is caused by the fact that poverty remains one of the most acute social problems of Russian society, despite the Government's long-term efforts to reduce its level. The article is devoted to the analysis of the problem of population poverty in modern Russia from the perspective of the theory of equality of opportunities. The key idea of this theory is to identify two groups of factors responsible for the inequality of individual achievements. The first group is formed by factors controlled by the individual and therefore related to the zone of personal responsibility (factors-efforts), the second group – factors beyond the control of the individual (factors-circumstances). The inequality caused by the first group of factors is considered ethically acceptable and socially useful, while the inequality formed by the factors of the second group (inequality of opportunities) is unfair and therefore should be eliminated in a fair society. The purpose of the article is to study the role of factors of the social background uncontrolled by an individual in relation to the risk of poverty. The analysis is based on the data of the sociological survey Life in Transition III (wave 2016) conducted by the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development. Methods: a parametric approach. To assess the contribution of individual factors, the Shepley decomposition was applied. The education of the parents, gender, nationality, place of birth of the individual were used as factors-circumstances, and the lack of poor status of the individual – a measure of individual achievements. According to the results of the assessment, the absolute level of inequality of opportunities when taking into account the education of both parents is 0,1105, and when taking into account the maximum education of parents – 0,1030. It is also established that the risk of poverty in the next generation is mainly due to the place of birth of an individual and the education of his parents. The least important factor is gender. It is assumed that the efforts of the State aimed at ensuring equal opportunities for the poor will make it possible to succeed in building a more just society.

Keywords

• inequality of opportunities in relation to the poor
• social background factors
• regression analysis
• shapley decomposition