Socio-economic differentiation in Russia

The problem of population differentiation by levels of per capita monetary income has become particularly urgent with the transition of Russia to a market economy. The article presents the dynamics of income differentiation of households for about 50 years, beginning from 1967. The source of information was the state statistics. The article also analyses the main factors of formation of the socio-economic inequality of Russian households: levels and differentiation in wages, social transfers, composition and size of families. The authors show that the official statistical data on differentiation of monetary income of the RF households for the past 25 years published by Rosstat do not correspond to the actually existing inequality. Similar conclusions were made by a number of research institutions in the 1990s and early 2000s. According to Rosstat data, in 2015 the funds coefficient of the monetary income differentiation of families in the Russian Federation was 15.5, that is not high for such a country as Russia with its variety of the natural and climatic conditions. The authors believe that the actual inequality is much higher - it is at least 1,5 times more than the officially published data.