The quality of housing conditions for households with children: a twenty-year retrospective

The article is devoted to the problem of the quality of housing conditions of Russian households with children, which is considered in relation to two groups of them, taking into account the age of children, determining the angle of the problem from the point of view of a 20-year retrospective. The first group consists of households with a child (children) under the age of one and a half years (born in the early 2020s), the second group consists of households with a child (children) aged 15-17 years (born in the early 2000s). The quality of housing conditions of households with a child (children) of younger and older age groups is revealed on the basis of an original system of social standards that identify housing conditions from the worst to good based on an assessment of a set of housing parameters (area size, spaciousness, amenities, etc.). The analysis is based on data from a Сomprehensive monitoring of living conditions of Rosstat (2022). The quality of housing conditions of households with a child (children) of the studied age groups was revealed. It is shown that among households with a child (children) under the age of one and a half years, in comparison with households with a child (children) aged 15-17 years, the proportion of those with housing conditions that do not meet two low standards is lower (64.6% vs. 72.5%), including the proportion with the worst housing conditions that do not reach the minimum standard (25.6% vs. 41.4%). Taking into account the identified features of the distribution of housing conditions by quality, the characteristics of households that determine differences in the parameters of the place of residence, the number of children, the level of monetary income, and ownership of housing are considered. For the households of the two studied groups with the worst and poor housing conditions, their subjective assessments of existing housing conditions were also revealed - the need to improve housing conditions and the strategies preferred to solve the housing issue.