Inequality of opportunities: the factor of “parents' base” (case study of a sociological survey of the population of the Northwestern federal district)

The high practical need to address the problems of smoothing the excessive social differentiation and the implementation of the constitutional provisions about the social state leads to the increased attention of the scientific community to the issue of social inequality where the poverty of a considerable part of the population is an important aspect. The President of the Russian Federation emphasized the significance of productive work in this area in his Message to the Federal Assembly of the Russian Federation in January (2020) noting that “a real reduction of poverty” in Russia should be the measure of this work. However, taking into account the process of society's stratification into the rich and the poor, it is important to understand its features and factors initially influencing the formation of the differentiation phenomena. The analysis of opportunities' inequality arising from the inherited social and cultural capital, namely the importance of education and occupational status of parents, the individual's gender and place of birth and the contribution of these factors to the achievement of welfare in society are of special interest in this regard. Thus, the study of the problem of opportunities' inequality in terms of the impact of the circumstances of birth on the population's differentiation by income on the level of the Federal District is the objective of the research. The authors analyze the relationship between the “parents' base” and the individual's achievements in the case of the Northwestern Federal District, the respondents' subjective assessment of the importance of various factors of life success and well-being are reviewed. Scientific novelty lies in the comparison of the research results with the Bashkir scientists' findings on the whole of Russia based on the data of the Russian Longitudinal Monitoring Survey conducted by the Higher School of Economics (RLMS-HSE) on the significant effect of parents' education (especially mother's higher education) on the individual's personal achievements. The study of the problem of opportunities' inequality provides important information about the intangible factors leading to social vulnerability and the necessity of formation less of socio-economic forms of support, than creating conditions minimizing the influence of the selected factors.