Middle class in the regions of the Northwestern federal district: quantity and reproduction capabilities

The priority of the government policy in the current economic and social situation is to maintain constant innovation development in all social spheres; therefore, the formation of middle class as the guarantee of social stability appears to be particularly relevant due to certain characteristic features of middle class representatives. These features include responsibility, high social activity and consciousness. Therefore, research into the size and structure of middle class is one of the main goals of modern sociology. The article analyses the middle class in the region on the basis of sociological surveys conducted in2008-2013 in the Vologda Oblast and in the Northwestern Federal District. The authors present approaches to studying and assessing the middle class, and make an attempt to determine its size. The article proposes an internal structure of the middle class in the region and draws a portrait of a typical representative of this category. The authors have found out that social mobility of the middle class in the region is low due to a number of socio-economic factors; this fact hampers the growth of the middle class up to the quantity determined in the Strategy for Socio-Economic Development of the Vologda Oblast for the Period up to 2020.