PERCEPTION OF POVERTY, SOCIAL INEQUALITY AND WILLINGNESS TO HELP POOR IN SAINT PETERSBURG (RUSSIA)

Abstract

The paper considers the perceptions of residents of St. Petersburg about the issue of poverty based on data from a telephone survey of residents of St. Petersburg (N = 1004), conducted by the Center for Sociological and Internet Research of St. Petersburg State University in April and May 2021. It revealed the specificities of the perception of poverty by groups with different financial situations – wealthier segments of the population of St. Petersburg perceive poverty less as a socially significant challenge while for the most economically vulnerable segments of the population of St. Petersburg, poverty appears to be the main issue in Russia, they tend to opt for the structural causes of poverty (social inequality, ineffective state policy). The authors disclose the tendency of dividing the poor into those deserving the assistance and those deserving not as well as the most acceptable ways of supporting the poor for the population of St. Petersburg. Using logistic regression, they also tested the hypothesis about the influence of the perceived causes of poverty on the willingness of St. Petersburg residents to help the poor.