15.7 million Russians – one in nine of the population – are living below the poverty line, Deputy Prime Minister Olga Golodet told an internal meeting in the Kremlin last week, and inflation could push that that figure up even further. Authorities are blaming the situationon the low income of many of the population, with the federal statistics service Rosstat estimating that nearly four million Russian are being paid less than RUB 7,500 ($160) a month. The figures are being disputed by the chairman of the Federation Council’s social policies committee Valery Ryazansky, who claims that many Russians do not declare their real incomes in order to evade taxes and the real number of Russia’s very poor is between five and seven million.
Source: ITAR-TASS