Karavay A. V. The Attitude of Russian Workers to Managing their Resources: Finances, Health and Spare Time

Abstract

This article considers the attitude of Russian workers to their resources by employing the empirical data of 2014 from the all-Russian research of Institute of Sociology of the Russian Academy of Sciences. What emerges is that manual workers and those employed in the trade and services industry are similar in their behavior and the strategy they employ on managing the resources available to them. On the other hand, they differ from skilled and highly qualified non-manual labor. In this regard, the situation in Russia is similar to other countries in the West. Interestingly, most workers do not perceive finances, health and free time as strategic resources that could assist with steady economic and social status. Such attitudes are due to their values and lifestyles, particularly a tendency to have a smaller horizon for planning than that of qualified non-manual workers. One of the main financial features in all groups of workers is a tendency to spend all one’s disposable funds rather than saving them, even at the expense of taking on increased debt.When considering available financial funds, consumer attitudes prevail among them, which is caused by the prominent tendency of conspicuous consumption among workers. They also treat the health in a consumerist fashion, paying less attention to it than many other social-economic groups in Russia. Although stable employment for workers mostly depends on physical health, healthy lifestyle and sports activities are not widespread among them, and few of them use the services of voluntary medical insurance. They tend to spend free time on simple domestic forms of leisure, rather than accumulating their resources in, for example, human capital. As a result, the 'margin of safety' for all working groups, including their highly skilled representatives that have rather high income, is rather small. In conditions of an economic crisis and reforms of the social state, Russian workers appear to be one of the most vulnerable population groups, and the data on the condition of various professional groups during the second economic crisis of 2014 confirms this.