The paper is a survey of literature and statistical sources on poverty and inequality in Russia in the 1990s and the 2000s. It serves as a background to OECD (2011), the OECD Labour Market and Social Policy Review of the Russian Federation that was released in 2011. We start with an overview of...

The paper uses a large household dataset -- the Russia Longitudinal Monitoring survey -- to measure inequality and poverty in Russia since the start of transition in 1992. What emerges is that inequality had already emerged by 1992 and has grown subsequently. By 1996 the Gini for Russia was...

Contrary to popular perception, Russia entered the transition with significant inequality. Using the large Russian Longitudinal Monitoring Survey dataset, we demonstrate that inequality has subsequently risen yet further and by end-1996 was roughly comparable to inequality in Mexico, Colombia or...

Inequality has increased in many of the transition economies. At the same time, spending on education has declined. In this paper we survey the factors driving these changes. We then set up a small general equilibrium model to simulate the effect of different policy choices on the path of...