ABSTRACT
This chapter focuses on aspects of poverty that are connected less with economic factors than with ethnic and cultural ones. The general premise is that the phenomenon of poverty can be understood only in relation to the particular cultural features of the society within which it exists. Criteria and perceptions of poverty established in so-called welfare states cannot be transferred to countries with developing economies. The position of Russia on the wealth-poverty scale is at the same level as countries such as Poland, Romania, Croatia, Estonia, Mexico, Brazil, and India. Loss of a breadwinner, illness or disability and retirement were factors in poverty. These were primarily causes within the family, connected with the composition of the particular family, with age and with state of health. Respondents themselves consistently interpreted the causes of their poverty in terms that relates to many forms and varied forms of social exclusion.
