Russians Reluctant to Admit to Having Savings
A steady growth in personal income is pushing Russians to deny having savings, pollsters at Levada-Center said Wednesday. The number of people who admit to having savings dropped from 26 to 22 percent this year, according to the latest poll. The survey shows that Russians have average savings of $2,000, though an increasing number of people consider this sum to be too small to call it a saving.
66 percent of Russians say their families have no savings or economies, the Yuri Levada Center said Wednesday presenting a recent poll. As little as 22 percent of those surveyed admit to having savings. 13 percent did not or would not give an answer. Levada-Center has been asking the savings questions over the past six years. The share of those admitting to saving money fell from 26 percent to 22 percent from 2002 while the share of Russians who say they have nothing is hovering between 66 and 70 percent. The number of Russians who give no answer doubled over the past five years from 6 to 13 percent.
Alexander Golov, a Levada-Center pollster, said in an interview with Kommersant that “nothing has changed over the past few years.” “The number of people who save money has not fallen, but the new data is merely showing a strong trend that as little as one-third of Russians make savings,” he said. The number of those declining to answer the question shows that Russians are becoming more secretive, according to the pollster. “People have become more careful talking about their savings. There are also fears of tax officials,” Alexander Golov notes. “But 90 percent of those who would not answer the question do have savings.”
Irina Denisova, leading economist at the Center for Economic and Financial Research, also says she sees no signs of declining savings. She accounts the results of the poll for a statistical error. Aleftina Gulyugina, deputy head of the Center for Income and Social Security Issues at the All-Russian Center of Living Standards points to “a problem with the word 'savings'.” “Pensioners are also putting by money but they probably do not view it as savings,” she says. “The notion seems to imply an ability to buy a car or flat.” The poll proves this assumption since as little as 20 percent of people over 55 say they have savings.
Total savings of Russians grew 8.5 trillion, or $2,000 per capita, in the past five and a half years, according to the Economic Development and Trade Ministry. $2,000 may be considerable for low-paid Russians but Moscow’s top-paid 20 percent tend to view the sum as operational expenses rather than savings.
A drop in savings is easy to explain as incomes of Russians are growing and an average salary went up 25 percent to 13,800 rubles over one year. Irina Denisova also points out the growth of borrowing, consumption and a rise in creditor debts over savings. In summer 2007, consumer credit per capita exceeded 30,000 rubles in Russia.
Daria Nikolaeva and Maxim Shiskhin
All the Article in Russian as of Aug. 16, 2007
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