One of the most pressing problems Russia is facing today is the problem of poverty. Poverty displays a diversity of forms where female poverty is the most commonplace. A gender study into the differences in poverty levels revealed the following major factors and features of feminization of poverty in Russia.

- single mother families and single elderly women make up a group of population with the highest poverty risks;
- poverty in single mother families is caused by their low income and inadequate private and public transfers (alimony for children after divorce, pensions for children after their father‘s death, single mother allowances, etc.);
- poverty of senior citizens, of whom 90% are women, results from their inadequate pensions;
- in the new economic conditions, pensioners‘ and single mother families‘ financial position has aggravated due to reduced public consumption funds.

Despite the fact that the Russian government has identified fighting poverty as a priority task, and programs have been designed to eliminate and prevent poverty in Russia for 2004 -2005, the current measures appear inadequate for the situation.

Thus, in an attempt at dealing with poverty the Russian government proposed a bill to replace social benefits by cash compensation for pensioners, war and labor veterans, disabled people and other socially vulnerable categories of population. According to expert estimates, this change in the welfare system will dramatically aggravate their situation since the amount of compensation is 4 to 5 times lower than the amounts of benefits paid previously. Given the fact that the average lifespan of women is about 14 years longer than that of men, the proposed substitution will have a longer impact on female pensioners.

In April 2004, WPA Femina conducted a study into the status of single mother families to compare them with intact families in terms of poverty.

The study aimed to evaluate poverty levels and work out measures to prevent and eliminate poverty in single mother families.

To determine poverty levels in single mother families we used three measuring methods (absolute, deprivation, and subjective) that complement each other and, if combined, help identify the poorest families: if a family is poor according to more than two criteria, it falls into the poorest category. The absolute method allows a comparison between the income/expenses and the subsistence level. The deprivation method is used to gage a poverty level through a deviation from the prevailing consumption standards. The subjective method determines a poverty level by interviewing a family to find out what income it needs to stay away from poverty.

Poverty is linked to deprivation of satisfying physiological needs (eating, drinking, etc.), deprivation of satisfying security needs (hiding in a shelter, avoiding danger, providing for future, etc.). Poverty features related to undernourishment suggest not just poverty, but dire poverty or penury. Being unable to buy vital medication, to create minimum comfort and security in everyday life is closely associated in woman‘s mind with the notion of poverty.

The study is concerned with 98 single mother and 96 intact families.

Single mother families were chosen at random from the list provided by social welfare services; intact families were chosen by random sampling.

Interviewed were single mothers and spouses from the intact families aged 18 to 55, with one child or more.

The largest group (41%) was a group of women aged 26 to 35.

Single mothers aged 36 to 45 accounted for 29%, those aged 19 to 25 accounted for 23%.

100% of all the interviewed single mothers had children under age, with one family in ten also having children over 18 years old. On the whole, the single mother families under study had one to four children.

In 37% of the single mother families the mother was raising one child, in 45% - two children. Three children and more live with their mother in 17% of the single parent families.

On average, the child-per-family ratio in the single mother families was 1.80; the dependence load (a number of children under age) is 1.57. For the intact families the figures are: the child-per-family ratio is 1.52; the dependence load is 1.22. Thus, in the single mother families surveyed the dependence load is 1.3 times the load born by the intact families.

Data on the families‘ financial status were obtained by summing up the key sources of income. The chart below shows that all the single mother families entered the first seven groups whose monthly income is $28 to $250.

The group with a total income of $250 to $1,125 included only intact families.

Whereas in Russia the median number of poor families among single mother families is 2.5 times more than that among nuclear families, our study revealed a gap of 4.8 times.

One single mother in 10 interviewed received a survivors‘ benefit ranging from $7 to $37 per child, which is 9% to 49% of the child‘s subsistence level (national average was $75 in the first quarter of 2004). It cannot make up for a decline in the family‘s income.

An irregular child‘s allowance is $5, which is 6.6% of the child‘s subsistence level. 59 women we interviewed said they received a family allowance from different sources, the amount ranging from $4.5 to $20 per child. The average allowance covers 14.7% of the child‘s subsistence level. This has a critical effect on the poverty rate dynamics among single mother families.

38 women under study received alimony amounting to an average of $21. Alimony accounts for 22.3% of the single mother family‘s total income. According to survey findings, alimony covers less than half of the money spent on food for a child. Other expenses concerning clothes, footwear, education, and medical care are entirely the single mother‘s responsibility. Over 50% of divorced women have their alimony payments delayed.

Our study was not aimed at exploring the causes of poverty, however, they reflect the general situation in the country. One group of causes includes women‘s position in the job market, concentration of women in low-paid jobs, sectoral and professional segregation, and discrimination in employment. The other group is related to demographic problems - high irregular childbirth rates, the growing number of divorces, male mortality for unnatural reasons, and a lifespan of aged pensioners.

Since single mother and intact families have different financial possibilities, we sought to compare their needs dividing them into regular (involving monthly expenses) and irregular (involving occasional expenses).

Having studied the two groups‘ most essential needs, we revealed a number of critical differences.

The most essential needs for single mother families (food, utilities, and current medical care) are not as urgent for intact families, whose priorities comprise tuition fees, leisure and home interior improvement.

Thus, for single mother families essential needs appear the most pressing. Poverty results in women feeling insecure physiologically, psychologically and socially. Deprivation of security entails psychological discomfort, raised anxiety and low social activity. The women said they felt desperate, hopeless, anxious and pessimistic.

1. Income levels in the single mother families interviewed are 4.8 times lower than that in the nuclear families.
2. The single mother families revealed the situation of expenses exceeding income, which may be due to a woman being employed by the informal business or to her receiving payment in kind.
3. The single mother tends to impose on herself stringent restrictions as regards satisfying the essential needs like food, health care, rent, etc.
4. Single mother families have rigid restrictions placed on satisfying their essential needs and ensuring the proper child development.
5. Mothers and children in single mother families are unable to get a good education and further to find a well-paid job.
6. Despite the emerging class of "the new poor", which experts believe to include families consisting of 1 to 2 children and two working parents, the use of deprivation poverty criteria does not confirm their poverty status. As was mentioned above, 2 or more deprivations revealed suggest an existing poverty factor. Our study found that 100% of respondents had more than 3 deprivations. The single mother families under study revealed extreme forms of persistent abject poverty.

- macroeconomic changes seeking to reduce poverty levels among employees, including raised pays for low-paid workers, measures to legalize informal income and measures to provide a competitive position of women in the job market;
- measures to target more welfare on the poorest groups in society, including single mother families, through improving the system of private and public transfers;
- enforcement of laws providing for alimony amounts adequate to the child‘s needs;
- improving the public transfer system to cover tuition fees;
- providing easier access to day-care centers;
- extending the sphere of services to create new jobs for women, on the one hand, and to enable working single mothers to combine work and household duties, on the other;
- professional training provided by job centers and specially intended for disadvantaged single mothers, and benefiting employers who hire them;
- opening free dining rooms at community social welfare offices or NGO offices (using small energy-saving "soy cow" machines);
- opening a university providing free education for single mothers;
- holding regular interdepartmental roundtable meetings to approve social projects designed for single mother families;
- conducting seminars on social and human rights issues for single mothers;
- designing a program to involve children from single mother families in various educational arrangements, and to provide for them free places in summer health camps.