THE PROBLEM OF MIDDLE CLASS FORMATION IN NORTHERN REGION (ON THE EXAMPLE OF KOMI REPUBLIC)
The article is devoted to the problems of forming and assessing the parameters of the middle class in the Komi Republic. The main approaches to the definition of the middle class and the assessment of its scale are considered. According to the results of the sociological survey “Standard and Quality of life of the employed population of the Northern region” conducted in 2017 (1120 people were interviewed), based on a combination of objective and subjective approaches, the scale of the middle class in the composition of the employed population of the Republic is estimated. The boundaries of the middle class are determined at the intersection of three criteria: self-identification with the middle layer of society, the level of education is not lower than the average of special and sufficient material security. To determine the level of material wealth, two approaches are applied with multidirectional assumptions, which gave almost identical results. It is revealed that in the composition of the employed population the middle class is a little more than 13 %, among the population of 15-72 years, taking into account the level of employment is 8-9 %, in the composition of the entire population of the Republic, taking into account the average household size is about 16 %. Thus, after 25 years of market transformation, the middle class in the region has not been truly formed. Its scale is very much affected by the average income of the population. At the heart of this is the continuing large differentiation between the incomes of the poor and the rich, between which the majority of the working population falls short of the average monthly wage in the region.