Problems of Information Support for Social Assistance to the Population During the COVID-19 Pandemic

The article deals with the actual problems of providing targeted social assistance to the population during the economic crisis. The research subject is a set of measures to stabilize the income of the population, implemented by the Government of the Russian Federation in 2020 during the most acute phase of the crisis associated with the COVID-19 pandemic. The purpose of the research is to analyze and summarize the practice of social assistance to the population, to identify problems and prospects for using the monetary approach to neutralize the negative socio-economic consequences of the restrictions associated with the pandemic. The main aspects of the analysis involve measures to stabilize the income of the population, including measures to support employment in the economy and stabilize labor income, as well as measures of targeted social assistance to households implemented in Russian practice. In the research, the monetary approach is considered in a broad context, extended to the criteria determining the resource provision of households and the population property status, the characteristics underling the households grouping by the degree of need, and targeted assistance measures implemented in the cash transfers form. The results of the research revealed a number of problems with the monetary approach using in the implementation of the anti-crisis strategy in the Russian Federation in its simplified version, focused on the indicators of household monetary income without taking into account other components of disposable resources. Additional challenges in identifying targeted social assistance groups during the pandemic were associated with the established practice of building structural groupings of households, based on the dichromatic principle, as well as the transition from 2021 of russian statistics to the new principles of calculating the minimum subsistence level, which is the basic criterion for determining the property status of the population. Improving the effectiveness of social assistance measures to the population in the Russian Federation during economic crises involves adjusting the existing methodological and information base used in assessing the degree of household need. If detailed statistics are available, the corresponding monetary indicators can serve as an information basis for identifying the objects of targeted social assistance. Such indicators, by analogy with foreign practice, can also be supplemented by non-monetary characteristics that determine the degree of household need on other grounds, on the basis of combination of which their groups can be identified in accordance with the priorities and types of social assistance provided. The article was prepared within the framework of the RANEPA state task research.

Contrasting Monetary and non-monetary measures of poverty in developing countries: a survey

While the study of poverty is popular amongst academia, there is yet to be a consensus on what defines such a phenomenon. Basing their arguments on different conceptual frameworks, some argue for a definition in monetary terms, as a lack of income or consumption, while others support a non-monetary approach focusing on shortcomings in diverse dimensions (health, education, nutrition…). Does it really matter that researchers do not agree on a definition of a poverty? Probing the empirical literature comparing monetary and non-monetary poverty in developing countries, this survey argues that different definitions of poverty lead to different populations identified as poor. Indeed, cross-tabulating poverty headcounts, it finds that a sizable portion of the non-monetary poor are excluded by the monetary approach. Moving to a subgroup level, it finds nonmonetary poverty amongst the monetary richest, and considerable disagreements with regards to poverty risks. In addition, these significant differences are not resolved when switching to a dynamic setting through panel studies. Policy implications are important: the risk mistargeting and misevaluation of policies is high if we do not consider both approaches concomitantly without one taking precedence over the other.

Valuing Clean Air

The passage of the Clean Air Act and the creation of the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) in 1970 marked a sweeping transformation in American politics. In a few short years, the environmental movement pushed Republican and Democratic elected officials to articulate a right to clean air as part of a bevy of new federal guarantees. Charged with delivering on those promises, the EPA represented a bold assertion that the federal government had a responsibility to protect the environment, the authority to command private business to reduce their pollution, and the capacity to dictate how they did so. But revolutions are always contested and the starburst of environmental concern that propelled the Clean Air Act and the EPA coincided with economic convulsions that shook the liberal state to its core. As powerful businesses pressed to roll back regulations, elected officials from both parties questioned whether the nation could keep its environmental promises. Pushing on, the EPA adopted a monetized approach to environmental value that sat at odds with environmentalist notions of natural rights but provided a critical shield for the agency’s rulemaking, as environmental protection came to serve as a key battleground in larger debates over markets, government, and public welfare. The EPA’s success and the potential limits of its monetary approach are evident in the very air we breathe today—far cleaner and healthier as a result of the EPA’s actions, but holding new threats in a rapidly changing climate.

Introduction

From its creation in 1970, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) played a key role in struggles over the responsibility, authority, and capacity of the federal government to safeguard the public welfare against the ills of industrial society. But despite this centrality, the EPA largely remains a cipher in modern American history. In opening up the EPA’s history through an examination of the agency’s governance of air pollution from 1970 to the 1990s, this book shows how administrative agencies came to structure core aspects of our everyday lives. The enduring power of the EPA depended on its adoption of a monetary approach to environmental goods, and this book explores the translation of different notions of environmental value into policy as a key space in the evolution of core ideas about the environment and the public welfare.

Poverty in the European Union and in Russia: A comparative analysis

Subject. The article considers and compares methods used in the European and domestic practice for determining the poverty line. Objectives. Our aim is to underpin the need to abandon the absolute approach to determining the poverty line in Russia in favor of relative approaches. Methods. We employ general scientific methods of cognition (comparison, analysis, and synthesis) and special methods of economic science (rationed assessments). The data of the Federal State Statistics Service and its territorial bodies, the Statistical Office of the European Communities, etc. serve as the information base of the study. Results. The paper shows the failure of the absolute approach to poverty measurement, reveals its shortcomings, determines that it distorts the picture of economic reality in the study of poverty. We apply the European monetary approach to poverty measurement. The comparative analysis of poverty rates in Western Europe and in Russia confirms the existence of extreme forms of poverty, both in developed European States and in our country. The paper uses the ‘zone theory’ to assess the severity of poverty in Russia; the actual values of these indicators in Western Europe serve as thresholds. Conclusions. The use of the relative monetary approach to measure poverty in the country gives a more accurate idea. Since 2021, Russia has switched to a similar method of calculating the subsistence rate and the minimum wage. Hence, the officially recorded level of poverty in the country will increase, and this will require additional measures to support the poor by the State.

Ecological and economic aspects of creating a global environmental management system

The authors argue that a market monetary approach to environmental management is not effective. In this regard, the article proposes theoretical background and practical recommendations for creating a global ecology management system based on the operational assessment of the current environmental impact magnitude. This system allows calculating the environmental value of products, as well as a number of key indicators of environmental performance, which are direct analogues of economic performance indicators. The proposed economic approach, based on the use of accounting methods, provides an opportunity to establish a mathematically accurate correlation between the economic and environmental results of economic and other related activities.The application of carbon emission data for selecting the “cleanest” type of generator that provides the least amount of total globally significant CO2 emissions has been analyzed as an example.