Income Mobility in Russia in the mid-1990s

This paper considers the phenomenon of income mobility during the process of economic transition in Russia. The study is based on the Russian Longitudinal Monitoring Survey (RLMS) data. The process of economic transition has generated sharp changes in the distribution of income among Russian households. Simultaneously with the emergence of the Russian nouveau rich, whole strata of the population have seen their sources of income dry up, and their life savings wiped out in the financial turmoil of the 1990s. The authors set out to identify the winners and the losers of the Russian transition, as well as explain income mobility in terms of the underlying socioeconomic factors.economic inequality; transformation processes; income distribution; income mobility; and social mobility