Revisiting the regional differentiation of population’s life quality

The article presents the issues of spatial differentiation of population’s life quality. The author emphasizes the urgent character of this problem, taking into account the modern tendencies of regions’ development, inequality of income distribution, which is excessive according to territories, incomes and consumption per capita. The problem of inequality is considered in two basic aspects: regions’ disproportion due to the level of economic development and population’s property differentiation. The article shows the main problems in development disparity of territorial entities of the country and the threats, determining them. The conducted analysis of the population’s property differentiation displays that more than a decade the income growth rates of the highly well-off strata of the Russian society essentially outrun the income growth of the less well-off part of population, which makes the problem of population’s inequality the potential threat. The author states that the main problems of socio-economic inequality are connected firstly in institutional defects of the redistributional system. The data received as part of the study allows to define problems and further prospects in developing policy in the sphere of improvement population’s life quality more precisely, which can become the basis for management decision-making.