Publications

The development of regulatory frameworks has accelerated in Russia after the ratification of the UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities in 2012. Using public opinion poll data and interviews with school administrators, teachers, assistants and parents, the authors show the challenges of moving towards inclusive education in contemporary Russia. The development of an inclusive school culture is analysed at the levels of artefacts, values and assumptions. Attempts to forge an inclusive culture do not always go smoothly; unexpected consequences occur, including open and hidden resistance and conflicts between children, parents and teachers. Meanwhile, the external context threatens the sustainability of inclusion.

The goal of this assessment is to identify barriers and opportunities to the supply of and demand for labor among persons with disabilities in Russia, as well as opportunities to increase their participation in the labor market. The research includes an overview of legis-lation, social policies, and national programs; an analysis of qualitative data, including the results of expert interviews and focus group discussions; and an analysis of quantitative data, including administrative information from the Ministry of Labor and Social Protection (MoLSP) and the Pension Fund of the Russian Federation (PFR) and a household survey conducted by the Russian State Statistical Service (Rosstat). A concerted effort was made to include and amplify the voices of persons with disabilities and the organizations that represent their interests. An assessment was undertaken of social protection and policy measures to facilitate the demand for and stimulate the supply of labor among persons with disabilities.

Using UKMOD, the UK tax-benefit microsimulation model, we analyse the impact on Londoners of the Covid-19 crisis, of the emergency policies put in place since March 2020 and of some counterfactual policy options, including the continuation of the £20 weekly uplift in Universal Credit and Working Tax Credit. Our main results can be summarised as follows: 1) The emergency measures introduced by the Government in March 2020 proved very effective at protecting the incomes of Londoners, particularly some of the most disadvantaged groups. 2) Withdrawing the £20 a week uplift to Universal Credit and Working Tax credits will put 130,000 more Londoners in poverty, with some of the most disadvantaged groups, including 60,000 lone parents, being disproportionately affected. The number of Black Londoners living in poverty would grow by 8% compared to 6% for all ethnic groups. 3) Less well-off Londoners will be worst affected, with the poorest 10% experiencing an 8% decrease in their incomes. 4) While Londoners will be more affected than the rest of the country by the withdrawal of the £20 uplift; across the UK, the poorest 10% of people will see their incomes cut by 5%. 5) On the other hand, keeping the £20 a week uplift to Universal Credit and Working Tax credits and going further by removing all the Benefit Caps would cut child poverty in London by 10%, keeping more than 70,000 children out of poverty.

This edited volume is the product of an online workshop that took place virtually at the George Washington University in October 2020. The workshop was part of a three-year project, “Islam in Russia, Russia in the Islamic World,” itself part of the Central Eurasia-Religion in International Affairs (CERIA) initiative. Launched in summer 2014 by GW’s Institute for European, Russian, and Eurasian Studies (IERES) and its Central Asia Program (CAP), CERIA inscribes itself in a broader effort at the Elliott School of International Affairs to bring greater academic and policy attention to the place of religion in international affairs. Generously funded by the Henry Luce Foundation, CERIA has since amplified synergies with existing programs at the Elliott School, in particular the Project on Middle East Political Science (POMEPS) and the MA in Islamic Studies, and deepened interdisciplinary discussions within the faculty, as well as with several university partners in the DC area.

This study compares the distributional impact of the main tax and social spending programmes in eight countries of the former Soviet Union (Armenia, Belarus, Georgia, Kyrgyzstan, Moldova, Russia, Tajikistan, Ukraine) by applying a state-of-the-art distributional analysis based on the Commitment to Equity methodology. The region is understudied in the welfare state literature but is highly interesting due to a unique combination of strong elements of path dependency (socialist legacies) with radical liberalization and welfare state retrenchment. This study examines the actual outcomes in terms of inequality and poverty and assesses the extent to which these outcomes can be attributed to various welfare state policies in these countries. We examine the extent to which taxes and social spending are progressive (i.e., whether the average transfer declines with income) and equalizing (whether they reduce inequality). In contrast to the majority of existing studies that are typically limited to the assessment of the distributional impact of direct taxes and transfers, we estimate the cumulative impact of the tax-benefit system as a whole, including direct and indirect taxes, cash transfers and transfers in kind such as public education and healthcare. Our analysis reveals the large cross-country variation in the impact of tax-benefit systems on inequality and poverty is the eight FSU countries, within the general trend towards a weak commitment to a redistributive role of the state. 

As part of the World Bank’s analytical support program in Russia, the team has been working with their Russian counterparts on collecting and analyzing data in order to gather evidence to inform coherent policies and strategies for creating modern schools and for promoting 21st-century teaching and learning in Russia. Both goals are being pursued through a series of national projects aimed at: (i) modernizing teaching and learning; (ii) putting Russia in the top 10 countries in terms of scores on international assessments; and (iii) expanding school infrastructure to ensure full-day schooling throughout the country. This new report presents a rigorous analysis of the data collected as part of the Trends in Mathematics and Science Study (TIMSS) in 2019 complemented by data on Russia from the OECD’s School User Survey (SUS), which was also fielded in 2019. The team added the SUS to the study as part of its collaboration with its Russian counterparts. The total sample represents all general education systems in the Russian Federation. This report also includes data from Information and Communication (IC) Literacy Test7 conducted in 2020 combined with the SUS. The two datasets are not related but both cover 21st-century skills and Russian students. This report analyzes the various 21st-century skills that it was possible to analyze using data from the TIMSS and IC Literacy Test. The analysis provides descriptive statistics related to the learning environments and teaching practices in Russia and draws some correlations between learning environment variables and learning outcomes. Furthermore, the study shows how different teaching styles affect student learning in the mathematics, science, and cognitive (reasoning and applying) domains of TIMSS. The team also analyzed the wellbeing construct included in TIMSS 2019. They found that the cognitive domains of reasoning and applying were well aligned with the 21st-century skills that can be measured directly by TIMSS. This study also attempts to use self-reported data from TIMSS student and teacher questionnaires and construct measures to stimulate teaching and learning activities related to 21st-century skills development. The study also assesses the impact of such measures on student performance across subject and cognitive domains. In exploring IC literacy and ICT technology in schools, the report analyzes key characteristics of the school environment, the use of ICT in schools, the use of technology by teachers with different mindsets towards modern education, and students' performance on the IC Literacy Test with an analysis of the context of the questions.

In this chapter, I shall be looking at the five Central Asian mullahs with whom I enjoyed the

closest contact during my fieldwork in Irkutsk, South-Eastern Siberia. Two of these men are Kyrgyz,

three are Tajiks. Each has a complex and multi-vector migration biography, his own relationship with

the imam and the rest of the Muslim environment, and his own personal spiritual trajectory. These

five mullahs—the main heroes of this study—are far from being the only Central Asian religious

experts in the Irkutsk area, much less the only Islamic authorities. However, they proved to be the

most visible and involved in the everyday religious life of the agglomeration. The biographies of these

mullahs, their practices and ideas, and their positions in the Muslim environment are similar in some

respects and different in others. These differences best illustrate the diversity of forms of Muslim

authority that have developed and continue to be constructed in the migration environment.

Dual or multiple earnership has been considered an important factor to prevent in-work poverty. The aim of this paper is to quantify the impact of second earnership on the risk of in-work poverty and the role of the tax-benefit system in moderating this risk. Our analysis refers to 2014 and employs EUROMOD, the tax-benefit microsimulation model for the European Union and the United Kingdom. In order to assess the role of second earners in preventing in-work poverty we simulate a counterfactual scenario where second earners become unemployed. Our results show that the effect of net replacement rates (i.e. the ratio of household income before and after the transition of second earners to unemployment) on the probability of in-work poverty is negative and statistically significant, but in relative terms it appears to be small compared to the effects of individual labour market characteristics, such as low pay and part-time employment.

In this paper we introduce UKMOD, a new tax-benefit model for England, Wales, Scotland, Northern Ireland and the whole of the UK. The model originates and replaces as a stand-alone model the UK component of EUROMOD, the tax-benefit model for the European Union member states, which from 2021 is not updated anymore. We describe the main departures from EUROMOD, discuss some key assumptions including data issues, and provide information on the nowcasting and macro-validation procedure applied.

Rapid technological progress is one of the basic processes in the modern world. It is an integral part both in the field of labor and employment and in leisure and recreation. The request for an accelerated implementation of digital technologies in the economy and social sphere, which is inherent in one of the national development goals of the Russian Federation, makes this topic more important. In the presence of technological challenges, people have to adapt to constantly emerging innovations. Meanwhile the perception of innovations together with other individual characteristics and socioeconomic characteristics of different social groups could be considered determinants of openness to technological innovations. Based on this assumption, the authors of this article set the following objectives: they evaluate the openness of the population to innovation (through the construction of the index), examine the perception of innovation (by identifying factors of the perception of new technologies), and test the relationship between openness to innovation and the perception of new technologies. The multi-domain index of openness to innovation combines assessments of individual attitude, acceptance, and trust in innovations related to various spheres of the population’s life. The perception of innovation is revealed through the Technology Acceptance Model and includes: perceived ease of use of new technologies; the perceived usefulness of new technologies; perceived security and reliability of new technologies; and perceived elitist features of new technologies. This study demonstrates that openness to innovation depends upon the perception of new technologies and is differentiated among population groups.

The article examines the social topography and configuration of the Muslim space of a Russian city.

It focuses on the position, religious practices, and worldviews of Central Asian mullahs who participate

actively in the religious life of local communities, conduct various rituals, and provide counsel or guidance

to fellow believers. These figures are individuals that migrated from Central Asia, call themselves

mullahs, possess significant social capital, and in fact play a considerable part in shaping the everyday

religious experience of their fellow believers, often their countrymen, as well as in establishing and

maintaining the local Muslim space, even though they are not legally appointed muftis, nor do they

hold official positions at a city mosque. I attempt to explore what kinds of relationships and rapports

these mullahs build with or vis-.-vis local imams, their countrymen, and the Muslim milieu in general.

I pay particular attention both to the religious experience and the experience of migration in biographical

stories of my informants, trying to understand their reflexivity, striving for self-improvement,

and the way they comprehend their duty toward the God and other believers.

The paper is devoted to the quantitative assessment and analysis of changes in income and poverty in the Russian Federation during the first wave of the COVID-19 pandemic. In order to mitigate a certain decline in the financial conditions of households derived from the lockdown shock on the labor market, the federal government adopted a set of income support measures mainly addressed to families with children and officially registered unemployed. The study aims to quantify the impact of these new long-term and short-term cash transfers on average income and poverty rate for the entire population as well as across different categories of households. The two-stage microsimulation modeling is based on the data of the Statistical Survey of Income and Participation in Social Programs, annually conducted by Rosstat. The estimates show that the additional cash transfers accounted for about 15% and 35% mitigation of the decrease in average income and the increase of the poverty rate, respectively, compared to the levels at the start of 2020. It is found that families with children aged between 3 and 7 were likely to benefit most from the support measures, which almost totally prevented the growth of poverty in this category of households. Conversely, the positive impact was minimal for families with children over 7 years and negligibly small for families without children. Informal workers also fell outside the scope of federal anti-crisis social policy tools. So, for these three population categories, the aggravated problems of income reduction and rising poverty remained unresolved. The findings of the study also confirm that the universal and temporary cash transfers are much less effective in income support and curbing the growth of poverty even among recipients.

This paper is based on the fieldwork carried out in Moscow among Muslim migrants. The research is focused on the practices of ritual healing and expelling djinn in the context of migration and urban post-secular environment. I am interested in self-reflection and introspection of all the participants of the treatment – a mullah, his patients, their relatives, and even opponents to these Muslim practices. In this study, it is not my intention to delve too deeply into the analysis of what possession is or determine its causes, but rather to look at specific situations from my field work through the lens of morality, authority and precarity, in order to attempt to present the experience of possession and my informants’ struggle against it in all its richness and complexity

Experts who work on the poverty issues agree that the group of poor is very heterogeneous. Based on duration of living below the subsistence level, authors identify persistent and transitory poverty. Income of those who face persistent poverty stays below the poverty line for a long time, while those who suffer from transitory poverty have unstable situation: after overcoming poverty for some time many of them can face the problem of low income again. Different methods exist for evaluating of the level of persistent and transitory poverty on both panel and cross-sectional data. The article presents the detailed description of advantages and limitations of different approaches to persistent poverty measurement. After consideration of these approaches the analysis of persistent poverty in Russia on RLMS HSE data is performed. Taking into account the huge set of previous studies we evaluate the share of persistently poor population according to methodology adopted in European countries, the profile of persistent poverty is also described. The results are compared with already existing data about chronic poverty in Europe

This chapter discusses the general legal framework regulating Russia’s welfare system and access for national citizens, foreigners residing in the country, and national citizens residing abroad to social benefts in fve policy areas: unemployment, health care, family benefts, pensions, and guaranteed minimum resources.

This book presents the main findings of a study on school learning environments and student outcomes, which the World Bank conducted in 2019 in three regions of the Russian Federation. Using data collected through the OECD School User Survey and the pilot “Trends in Mathematics and Science Study” (TIMSS), the book analyzes how a school’s infrastructure and learning environment may affect the progress and success of students in math and science. It also delves into teaching practices, analyzing their impact on learning and highlighting the important nexus between learning environments and teaching methods. The book concludes by recommending areas in which focused attention by educational authorities could improve educational policy and help maintain high-quality learning environments. The book will be useful for educators, school principals, architects, and policy makers who are involved in school infrastructure projects and are interested in increasing their knowledge of school design planning.