ISSN 0798 1015

Vol. 38 (Nº 33) Año 2017. Pág. 19

Social Phenomenon of Poverty and Mechanisms to Overcome It in a Northern Town

Fenómeno Social de la Pobreza y Mecanismos para Superarla en una Ciudad del Norte

Svetlana Dmitrievna RODIONOVA 1; Natalia Ivanovna SKOK 2; Vera Leonidovna MOLOZHAVENKO 3; Ekaterina Omarovna AKVAZBA 4; Tatyana Evgenevna UHABINA 5

Received: 15/05/2017 • Approved: 30/05/2017

Content

1. Introduction

2. Methodology

3. Results

4. Discussion

5. Conclusion

References

1. Introduction

1.1 Problem Setting

Today the mutual stipulation of such social phenomena as poverty and life quality becomes obvious because it is impossible to improve the population’s life quality without minimizing the level of poverty. In its turn it will provide further social and economic development of the society (Bykovskiy, 2007, p. 62).

Structural paradigm of the poverty sociology is a consequence of social changes, impact of factors that produce social inequality. In particular, in American sociology the concept of under-class considers the prosperity of state of the general welfare and implementation of target social programs that provide poverty reliefs as a key factor (Rodionova, 2014, p.10).

Social phenomenon of the Russian population’s poverty has not been considered as an object of scientific researches for a long time (Volchkova, Minina, 1999, p. 49). Theoretical and methodological aspects of the problem related to poverty and inequality in allocating profits have been mainly developed in researches of foreign authors.

According to the concept of the personality socialization of A.V. Mudrik, one of the factors related to victimization of population is climatic conditions. They stipulate the specificity of interpreting such a social and economic characteristic that is peculiar of certain population stratum as poverty. Citizens must spend more economic, communal, and physical resources for the sufficient level of life under conditions of Northern latitudes (Mironov, Pashuta, 2010, p. 52). People living under the Northern conditions do not have enough natural sun light and natural warmth. They have limited resources of consumption (goods of prime necessity), do not have access to “quick” high quality medical servicing, and face limited opportunities to organize their leisure in a multifarious mode (under-development of infrastructure, remoteness form cultural centers, limited list of socio-cultural services). Thus, indicators of the Northern people’s life quality are on a low level as compared to the financial and economic potential of Northern regions. Such social phenomenon as poverty among families living on Northern territories of Russia complicates the situation on providing the normalization of the life quality in Northern regions and makes the results of our sociological research actual.

Historically, at the beginning of the gas and oil reclamation the majority of Northern cities emerged as temporary centers. They were one of the elements of the system related to developing reserves and providing social needs of people (Brinkin, 2005, p.4). As soon as they developed, they gradually lost the nature of temporary constructions and turned into stationary centers of the future regional community. Today the system of social management of Northern cities is characterized by strategic planning and creation of innovational programs related to developing Northern cities (Serova, 2013, p. 201). Such type of activity is found at the confluence of social and strategic management. It accumulates methods of market stimulation of innovational processes on the local level and economic participation of local communities in creating favorable investment climate.

In accordance with the strategy related to modernizing the system of social management, priorities in organizing the life activity of Northern towns, in particular, in the town of Noyabrsk, move from the development of production to solving social and other issues on the population life activity. The town of Noyabrsk has got a system of social partnership of enterprises that contributes to the growth of population’s welfare, in particular between the town Administration and local business community (Comprehensive Plan of Development, 2011). It is possible to see in the structure of social management through the example of the local government that target social support of the Noyabrsk population is a tool to overcome absolutization of administrative and ream methods (Lyshova, 2001, p. 14). Management of creating social infrastructures, equaling starting opportunities, providing social services that used to be limited before are put into practice. Real conditions of certain citizens’ life are taken into account. It provides the possibility to more efficiently fulfill functions related to social support by the local government.

1.2. Demographic Situation

In 2012 according to its population, the town of Noyabrsk occupied the second position in the Yamalo-Nenetsk Autonomous District (hereinafter referred to as the YNAD). At that moment the population was 109.2 thous. people (Comprehensive Program…, 2013). The age structure of population of the town as well as other towns of the district is characterized by considerable domination of employable citizens – 77.3% thous. persons (70.7% of the total size). The population that is younger than the employable age is 22.3 thous. persons (20.4%), older than the employable age – 9.7 thous. persons (8.9%) (Passport of the Municipal Formation).

On the background of other municipal formations of the district, the town of Noyabrsk holds an average position according to such an important characteristic of the social and economic development as the average salary of employees. According to this indicator (RUB 57.8 thous.), Noyabrsk vividly exceeds other municipal formations in the district but it is inferior not only to such towns as Novy Urengoy and Salekhard (more than 1.2 times) but also to the YNAD (RUB 64.0 thous.).

Among other Russian cities and towns Noyabrsk is distinguished by natural growth (11‰ in 2012). It is related not only to a high birth rate but also to a very low death rate (4.5‰ in 2012) stipulated by a low share of aged people that usually make up the basic share of death cases.

Noyabrsk has the lowest level of child mortality in the YNAD (5.02 cases per 1,000 newborn on average for the period of 2007-2012) (forecasting according to the YNAD – 3.9 in 2020) (Strategy of Social and Economic Development, 2014, p.4).

We make an attempt to research the problem related to the social and economic differentiation of disadvantaged population and stipulation of measures of social support aiming at improving the life level and decreasing the level of poverty. It allows to give a vivid picture of overcoming the poverty in the town of Noyabrsk and changes that take place in this area.

Noyabrsk as an object of empiric sociological research is characterized by the fact that it has a rather big economic potential and the developed system of helping disadvantaged population strata (Kochurkova, 2000, p. 13). Noyabrsk has (according to 2011 data) 4.6% of needy citizens who have at least once contacted social protection bodies for help. Thus, the town of Noyabrsk is a mini model that can be taken as a basis for making empiric researches and defining organizational and management mechanisms to overcome poverty in the Northern town.

Within the empiric research we studied disadvantaged families, i.e. the most often families with a large dependency loading: the family includes pensioners (disabled people), minor children, and they do not have enough resources to provide the reserve of life, material and social strength (Lezhnina, 2010, p. 36). This type of families is characterized by a passive economic conduct. It is stipulated by the lack of “free” money, ability and opportunity to rationally allocate their profits because they do not have them. It is important to understand and take into account the specificity of social and psychological state of the person who has not enough resources and opportunities under the current conditions to decrease real expenses. It causes the growth of social tension. It makes the analysis of the situation with the disadvantageous strata of population extremely actual in terms of practice (Tikhonova, 2014, p. 7).

2. Methodology

The research was conducted by interviewing representatives of disadvantageous families. The selected aggregate was 844 persons, i.e. 16.7% of the general aggregate (4,400 persons). The size of the population of the town of Noyabrsk is 110,000 persons. For 2011, 4.6% of them were acknowledged as officially poor. According to the standards accepted in the sociological practice, the selection making up 3-5% of the general aggregate is acknowledged as representative, the poll of 16.7% of the general aggregate is more than enough to prove the representativeness (Rodionova, Bogdanova, 2014, p. 8).

The goal of our sociological research was to define the specificity of the poverty in the Northern region and to reveal the problems needy people face in order to develop an organizational and management mechanism to resolve them.

The research units included families that at the moment of poll were referred to disadvantageous, i.e. the ones that had the profit lower than the poverty level per person determined in the Yamalo-Nenetsk Autonomous District. During the research we polled the responders who at the moment of the poll had an official status of needy (disadvantageous), acknowledged their need, contacted for state support, approved their need and obtained aid.

This research set the following tasks: to study economic situation and conduct of disadvantageous families, to make a social and professional portrait of the family, and to reveal basic social and demographic factors that define the risk of joining this category; to reveal differences in their life conditions in the area of consumption due to the fact that the social and economic and social and communal environment limit life benchmarks in the production area and directionality of social mobility.

The research applied the analysis of secondary information of the federal, regional legislation, and municipal enactments that regulate the activity of bodies of social area in relation to poverty; materials of sociological researches published in sociological periodicals; statistical data represented in collections of the State Statistics Committee for Population of the Russian Federation, Tyumen Region and the Yamalo-Nenetsk Autonomous District; statistical reports of the municipal formation the town of Noyabrsk on the theme under research; social programs of federal, district and municipal levels aimed at solving problems of poor population strata, as well as decreasing the poverty severity.

3. Results

3.1. At the initial stage, when compiling the forecasting background, the first step (Bestuzhev-Lada, Namestnikova, 2002, p. 65) was to define groups of responders, their professional status, and to reveal specificity of positioning them on the labor market and in the system of production relations, as a whole. Based on the obtained results of the analysis of the conducted research, we defined specificity of disadvantage in the Northern town that lies in the lack of the strong connection of the life level with professional statuses. The obtained data shows the availability of a great share of people with the professional portrait that according to its characteristics is close to the portrait of the society with the developed market economies. It mainly contains representatives that are typical of “classical” lowest classes of professional statuses: pensioners, low- and unqualified employees. Table 1 shows it. 

Table 1. Professional Status of Polled Families (in Percent as to the Number of Responders)

On the labor market they can only offer their physical ability to labor. As a consequence, they do not have an opportunity to provide sufficient income for welfare growth and life quality improvement. At the present time actually all borders for foreign migrants are open. They basically enter the same segment of the labor market where the “buyer’s market” is formed with the relevant damping of the cost of labor force of the same quality because of the excess of its offer. Thus, most often families of unemployed earners live at the expense of casual (temporary) revenues or thanks to the help from relatives and acquaintances. The level of poverty in such families is 2-2.5 times higher than that in others.

3.2. Temporary Employment of Citizens

One of the most efficient mechanisms to solve the problem related to the population employment in the municipal level is the organization of social works. It does not require a prior professional training of employees who have a socially useful directionality, and is organized to provide temporary employment of citizens who are searching for a job. This is a real contribution to the population employment on the municipal level. Using funds of the municipal formation together with the population employment center in the town of Noyabrsk, a municipal business incubator (a collective office for beginning entrepreneurs) was organized. It implements programs on psychological training related to developing qualities that contribute to the entrepreneurial activity of the town population in order to contribute to the entrepreneurial initiative of unemployed people. The results of this research give a prior estimation of the level of everyday life of some responders differing according to the membership. Table 2 shows it. 

Table 2. Polled Family Membership (in Percent as to Responders)

The families with the increased dependents loading make up the main share of families who need a real help. In incomplete families (29.5%) and families with a single mother who has 1-2 children (21.7%), as a rule, a woman who does not have a demanded and well-paid profession is the family head. Most often it is related to health problems and employment limitations. Providing this category of families with help initially has a dependent nature because in order to get a status of a single mother, she intentionally does not specify the child’s father in the birth certificate, but she lives together with him. The second and the third child are often born in this category of families.

Sensitivity of single mothers to the social opinion and popularity of stereotypes about their moral qualities are specified in various researches (Yarskaya-Smirnova, Romanov, 2004, p. 34-39). This phenomenon is not merely Russian. Single motherhood as a factor of poverty was discussed within the under-class concept in the 1970s in the USA. This point of view was represented in the works of the American Sociologist William Wilson (Wilson W. 1087, p.48). Their position is characterized by not their failure, lack of rationality or even special cultural values and expectations, but above all by their moral fall. The existence of the group itself is a threat to principles of the “moral hygiene” of the society” (Dean H., Taylor-Gooby P., 1992. p.47).

3.3. Families’ Current Profit

The multi-genealogical families make up the lowest percent. However, in fact the situation is different. In order to understand the specificity of disadvantageous families’ life, we analyzed their current income, the existing differences of their life level that showed differences in the level of income saved for years, as well as family problems. Table 3 shows it.

Table 3. Basic Problems of Polled Families (in Percent)

3.4. Families’ Life Conditions

According to the research, in their lives the responders most often face economic problems. The main reason of material difficulties in many families is unemployment of family adults (unemployment, disability, 3 years leave for childcare, absence of demand for minor children’s alimony, etc.). Families needing special state support also include refugees’ families and families of internal refugees (migrants), unemployed people’s families who have minor children as dependents.

It is obvious that the majority of responders are concerned by difficulties related to meeting the most important needs due to the fact that a decrease in the population life level causes a number of negative consequences: decrease or fall of the social status, impossibility to meet material and moral needs.

It was noticed that one more important indicator of the poverty level was residential conditions of responders. They include not only the provision with the general residential area, but also the level of its accomplishments, and area of the occupied place of residence. Today according to this parameter disadvantageous families greatly differ from others. Table 4 shows it.

Table 4. Residential Conditions Where Needy Families Live (in Percent as to Responders)

At the present time the greatest part of responders live in modern apartments with conveniences. However, in half of them the average persons’ provision with the residential area remains lower than the sanitary standard because they either occupy a room in a multifamily unit or a dormitory (7 to 15.7%). The problems of today’s Noyabrsk are peculiar of all Northern towns of Russia. In spite of the fact the town is young, it has much substandard housing located basically in former departmental settlements. Many houses and entrances need capital repair, and many houses are in a neglected state.

Many responders answer the question about the attitude of families to increasing the number of children that in spite of material difficulties they still plan to give birth to their children (47.5%). However, the majority of them do not plan to increase the number of children in the family (51.5%), and only 0.9% of families plan to adopt a child to bring him/her up in the family.

Disadvantageous families are lowly resourceful families that not only lack economic or qualification capital but also elementary social capital that would enable them to rely on someone’s support except state, and that cannot individually leave the situation they got into.

Such factors as residential conditions, climatic conditions of life, material difficulties, minor children in the family, insufficient number of pre-school establishments for children, uncertainty in tomorrow, problems related to the family members’ employment, psychological problems in the family, state of family members’ health, mother’s or father’s health state have an impact on solving the problem related to increasing the number of children in the family.

3.5. Basic Characteristics of Poor Families’ Social Portrait

Disadvantageous families are peculiar of a low level of salaries, great dependents’ loading that in the future may cause a decrease in their income per person. A peculiar feature in the economic position of the category of citizens under analysis includes firstly a different level of income, secondly, level and quality of their life. The property provision of representatives of disadvantageous families is inconsiderable. It says about a low level and quality of their life, the lack of sufficient resources to improve these indicators in the future. Over the recent years families have had to gradually sell the real estate they have got earlier – flats, garages – to maintain the current level of life at the expense of the property they had before.

As this research shows, the loading on families with minor children is less critical than that on families with unemployed pensioners (disabled members). One more negative indicator of the family position can be availability of chronically ill members of the family who do not have a status of disabled people.

Based on the research we made, it is possible to conclude that poverty of disadvantageous families is a consequence of interrelated factors: economic (low salary and its high differentiation, unemployment), social (disability, ageing, marginalization, and juvenile delinquency), demographic (incomplete families, families with a high dependents’ loading, youth and older generation), and political (breakage of the current inter-regional relations, forced migration).

It is obvious that life settings of disadvantageous families are more similar than different. It proves the maintenance of the internal worldview integrity of the overwhelming majority of this category of families.

3.6. Organizational and Management Mechanism to Overcome Poverty

The result of the theoretical and practical research is an organizational and management mechanism to overcome the poverty in the town of Noyabrsk where the emphasis is made on the interrelation of all socially important structures with the town administration to make constant detailed control and analyze of the quality of the social services rendered to poor population, as well as synchronization of social services rendering to provide the town population with equal opportunities to overcome poverty.

When implementing the organizational and management mechanism, the main goal of the interrelation between the government bodies and population of the town will be to improve the material and special and cultural level of disadvantageous people by creating the required conditions for self-provision and self-realization of the personality.

4. Discussion

Both the process of forming the poverty and process of its scientific understanding have a detailed retrospective. Its study allows to state that during changing this social phenomenon the apparatus of its research changed, and more than that, the mechanism of managing it also changed. As the social and economic system developed, along with considering economic quantity indicators traditionally used in management processes, studying life quality, social opportunities and potential of developing and setting of a personality as a starting point to overcome poverty, possible ways to achieve this and other associated goals acquire more and more importance in understanding poverty problems.

Today researching the poverty on the level of social groups is one of the most important areas of the sociological analysis of the society social structure. The taken grounding of this approach to researching the poverty stipulated addressing to the sociological theory of poverty.

Based on the conducted analysis, the authors have revealed that the Russian poverty combines both objective (statistical, quantitative characteristics) and subjective (characteristics systematically obtained in social polls of responders) factors. Without taking into account “the subjective factor”, it is impossible to understand how the current system may change and what changes it is possible to expect in it because any changes take place through people’s activity. The value of this factor is strengthened by a great share of needy people, large-scale poverty in Russia, while material position defines the structure of social self-identification of the society.

Three basic areas of the social and management activity have been revealed: 1) social protection of the part of population that due to objective reasons cannot adapt to market relations, 2) reconstruction of the system of social protection that is adequate to market transformations, and 3) self-organization of the management object (in this case this is poor population), creation of new forms and structures of organizations that provide extended reproduction of human resources.

5. Conclusion

When developing measures aimed at fighting poverty in Russia under modern conditions, it is necessary to consider every region separately, because poverty reasons differ in them.

In order to reveal inter-regional differences to approaches and structure of poverty, we made an empiric research. It generated the structure of poor population of the Northern region – a social portrait that mainly consists of incomplete families or those with many children, those that have unemployed earners and many dependents.

Emphasizing the specificity of the practice related to managing poverty overcoming in the Northern region, the authors have developed the model to transform value-focused settings of poverty. Based on the analysis of theoretical development and empiric researches, it is necessary to conclude that members of poor families are characterized by forming a socially passive view on the life. It becomes a worldview barrier in transforming from the socially passive to socially active life psychology, and complicates full participation of such families’ members in the life of society. The conducted analysis has allowed to develop an organizationally management mechanism to overcome the poverty on the municipal level and to reveal measures on preventing poverty under the Northern conditions.

As a conclusion, it is possible to note that in order to overcome poverty, it is necessary to have an extended remedial program that supposes the transformation of all main systems of the life activity. Above all, it requires to remedy the rational consciousness and to mobilize material and technical, and labor resources. The program related to decreasing the poverty must have a status of national and include various methods and techniques in accordance with the reasons of poverty in separate regions and its consequences for poor strata and the society as a whole. 

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1. Federal State Budget Educational Institution of Higher Education “Industrial University of Tyumen”, 625000, Tyumen Region Ural Federal District, Tyumen, Volodarskiy St., 38. Email: kitino@mail.ru

2. Federal State Budget Educational Institution of Higher Education “Industrial University of Tyumen”, 625000, Tyumen Region Ural Federal District, Tyumen, Volodarskiy St., 38

3. Federal State Budget Educational Institution of Higher Education “Industrial University of Tyumen”, 625000, Tyumen Region Ural Federal District, Tyumen, Volodarskiy St., 38

4. Federal State Budget Educational Institution of Higher Education “Industrial University of Tyumen”, 625000, Tyumen Region Ural Federal District, Tyumen, Volodarskiy St., 38

5. Federal State Budget Educational Institution of Higher Education “Industrial University of Tyumen”, 625000, Tyumen Region Ural Federal District, Tyumen, Volodarskiy St., 38