Report: 80% of Russian families report problems with essential needs

MOSCOW, Apr 3 (PRIME) -- A Russian family needs at least 58,500 rubles a month to make ends meet, and 79.5% experience difficulties with satisfying their basic needs, business newspaper RBC Daily reported on Wednesday, citing the Federal State Statistics Service.

The survey covered 60,000 households in all Russian regions and was conducted on September 15–29, basing on subjective reports. The list of basic needs was also reported subjectively.

Of the total number of informants, 53% said they cannot cope with unexpected expenses such as healthcare bills or costs of a sudden repair of housing or replacement of costly long-use goods.

RBC Daily said that 10.1% of families cannot afford meat at least once every two days, and 21.1% cannot eat fruit every day. 35.4% of households cannot buy two pairs of shoes for each family member with 40% of families with two or more kids reported this.

According to Rosstat, 25% of the families cannot cope with the costs of family gatherings for celebrations, 11% of families have no money for life-saving medicines and about 50% cannot spend at least a week per year on vacations outside home.

Presidential spokesman Dmitry Peskov said that the Kremlin wants the watchdog to explain the source of the information.

“Commenting on this is difficult, to be honest. Why shoes, why a third, where all these figures are from. Frankly speaking, I would be glad if the Federal State Statistics Service explained the data,” he told reporters.

(65.4726 rubles – U.S. $1)

End