Regional and settlement aspects in the structure of nonfinancial wealth of Russian Households

Abstract

The paper present results obtained from analysis of data about nonfinancial assets owned by or at the disposal of Russian households. The study was based on data from Integrated Monitoring of Living Conditions of the Russian Population (Rosstat, 2011), representing the general population and federal districts. Taking into account the content of the database, the nonfinancial wealth of households included the following assets: primary residence and other residential property, cars and other vehicles, garage, land plots, and business ownership or equity. The main asset of families in Russia is their housing (which on average is owned by 86% households in the country); the next most common asset is land (in ownership or use, 49% households); the third leading assets is cars (owned by 37% of households). Each asset was assigned points accounting for its characteristics, which enabled us to integrally assess the property assets held by each household and to identify six layers characterized by their holdings of nonfinancial assets. The layers are arranged from the group with the least wealth to the group with the largest: the lowest layer (13.6% of households), base layers with holdings lower (30.3%) and higher (28.1%) than the average, and the layer with moderately high (16.2%) and the highest (5.8% of all households) holdings of nonfinancial assets; there was also a separate stratum of households with no assets (6.1%).

The structure of owners with regard to each asset and the comprehensive (point-based) estimate of wealth of households are analyzed in the context of federal districts and settlements with different numbers of residents (less than 1000 people, 1000–50000, 50000–100000, 100000–500000, 500000–1000000, and more than 1 mln people). Differences in wealth are more closely related to the settlement characteristics of the place of residence than with regional ones. However, although the characteristics of the place of residence substantially increase the likelihood of a particular level of nonfinancial wealth for a household, their contribution is much less significant than the contribution of characteristics reflecting the efforts of household members to accumulate wealth and family stability.