Principles of Reforming the Russian Consumer Basket

Abstract

The paper deals with the problem of reforming the Russian consumer basket in the light of its planned change in the beginning of 2021. The author puts forward a justified system of principles for its reform based on trends of post-industrial development, approaches for determining social guarantees in developed countries and consideration of changes that took place in the Russian social sphere over the last years. The research considered ways of forming the consumer basket, calculation of the minimum cost of living including a portion of established services as a share of existing consumer basket and the cost of minimal set of infrastructure services for an able-bodied citizen (for a St-Petersburg case). Based on the statistical data analysis, the author has shown that the main drawbacks of the current consumer basket is lower consumption of services and absence of obligatory payments and fees among its components, which lead to growing debt for housing and communal services and deeper poverty. The author proposes doubling the share of cost of services in the consumer basket and increasing the level of non-taxable income by the cost of living of an able-bodied person.