Social well-being and social success of Russian youth

Abstract

Based on research data from the Institute of Sociology of the Federal Scientific Research Center of the Russian Academy of Sciences, the article examines the dynamics and specifics of the social well-being of young people through the prism of comparing objective indicators of income and its subjective assessments. The specifics of young people's perception of their social success in combination with ideological attitudes towards self-sufficiency are also considered. It is shown that today's youth have significantly reduced the chances of achieving relatively high incomes in the early stages of life, but the chances of youth groups sliding towards the poverty line have not increased either. Even though since 2003 the number of the most well-to-do among young people has decreased, the share of the least well-to-do youth has remained stable. Against this background, the general standards of life for young people have risen, and the boundaries of trouble have become more blurred. The category of social well-being has expanded, and the role of income as one of its key markers has decreased. Nevertheless, for Russian youth, a relatively long cycle of reaching the maximum level of social well-being remains. It is demonstrated that the Russian youth has high expectations regarding their own achievements in the future. At the same time, it is distinguished by a characteristic youth vision of the criteria for success in life, associated with the problems and expectations of a particular stage of the life cycle. It is also shown that the degree of self-realization of both young people and Russians is significantly associated with many objective characteristics of the individual. Thus, the higher the position occupied by an individual in various status hierarchies, the better he evaluates the degree of realization of his own plans. In turn, the feeling of social outsider ship stimulates the formation of attitudes towards extreme individualism, the readiness to achieve what is desired at any cost. A healthy understanding of social success correlates with the priority setting of moral norms and regulations.