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TERRA ECONOMICUS

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  • 2015
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  • Specificity of Russian workers’ attitudes and behavior in terms of their personal finances

Specificity of Russian workers’ attitudes and behavior in terms of their personal finances

TERRA ECONOMICUS, , Vol. 13 (no. 1),
p. 89-106

Features of the attitudes and behavior concerning the use of personal disposable funds of the working class are analyzed in the article on the basis of the materials of the all-Russian research of the Institute of Sociology of the Russian Academy of Sciences conducted in 2014. It is compared with the attitudes and behavior of the population of Russia in general, as well as of highly qualified persons engaged in intellectual labor. It is shown that the «margin of safety» of the working class is very small because of their low level of income and also because of their tendency to spend all disposable funds and not to save. Both this fact and the Russians’ low level of trust in any organized savings and investments reduce the internal investment potential of the country. It is stated that traditional concepts explaining financial behavior of people are hardly applicable today in Russia. It is shown that highly skilled workers, workers of low and middle qualification and ordinary workers of trade and service are very similar among themselves concerning the dominating attitudes and real financial behavior, and differ in this sense from the workers taking professional positions which are traditionally considered to belong to the middle class.


Keywords: working class; occupational structure; attitudes; household behavior; saving behavior; spending behavior; personal finances; spenders; savers; workers; social structure

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Publisher: Southern Federal University
Founder: Southern Federal University
ISSN: 2073-6606