The Cost of School Set for the First-Former in View of Poverty Problem in Russia

Abstract

The article analyzes the cost of school set for the first-former as an indicator of expenses spent on yearly child fittingup for school. The calculation of the first-former set was done on the basis of the standard list of goods fixed by Rosstat for each region with regard to annual price dynamics in 2006–2021. The results show that the cost of the set rises every year both in absolute figures and in relation to the regional living wage. At the same time estimation of the average per capita income of households without children, households with one, two, three and more children based on selective monitoring of population income in 2014–2021 showed that the cost of school set for the firstformer exceeded the average per capita income of families with children and the gap increases with the number of children. The obtained results prove the necessity to develop measures of social support of families with school children. In the article the authors study the effective regional measures of supporting such families and put forward approaches to their upgrading. The research can be useful for working-out measures aimed at cutting the poverty rate in entities of the country, as families with children are the most vulnerable in the context of risk of getting into poverty.