The level and quality of living standards are deteriorating in almost all countries of the world, including Russia. The article analyzes one of the features of modern Russia -an abnormally large proportion of the poor population in a rich country. This population group does not have stable socio-economic characteristics, in this regard, it needs constant monitoring: studying the mode, level and quality of life, value system, behaviour strategy to improve the social policy effectiveness of the state. Issues on the level and quality of living standards have always been given some attention, but mainly scientific searches were conducted in the field of socio-economic, monetary and financial relations, comparative sociology and statistics. In the paradigm of the philosophy of law, the problems of poverty and misery were not studied. The object of the study is the low-income population of Russia. The subject of the study is the dynamics of the main indicators of the living standards, the causes of poverty and misery, their conditionality by the social legislation of the state. The purpose of the study is to identify the signs, scale, and depth of poverty in Russia. Based on sociological comparative studies, the analysis of poverty and misery in Russia in comparison with other countries, in particular, with the People's Republic of China, is carried out. The peculiarity of the article is that the analysis of the "population poverty" phenomenon is not limited to socio-economic, sociological and statistical methods, but is conducted in the paradigm of the philosophy of law.