The median earnings of a Russian official required to report income for 2020 amounted to 82 thousand rubles a month, informs Transparency International with reference to the data of the Declarator database. This amount is three times higher than the median income of a Russian citizen for the same period, calculated by Rosstat (27 thousand rubles a month).
The organization also compared the incomes of officials and residents in each of the subjects of the country. The leaders in terms of the income gap were Tuva (the income of officials is seven times higher than that of ordinary citizens) and Ingushetia (six times the gap). These regions have the lowest median incomes of residents: 14 thousand rubles a month.
The smallest double gap was recorded in the Belgorod and Kaluga regions, Krasnodar Territory, Nenets Autonomous Okrug, Adygea, North Ossetia and Tatarstan.
The highest median incomes were for officials in the Yamalo-Nenets Autonomous Okrug (241 thousand rubles a month), Moscow (216 thousand) and Yakutia (185 thousand). Least of all officials receive in the Kirov region (52 thousand rubles), Kalmykia (48 thousand) and North Ossetia (45 thousand).
The median value is the number exactly in the middle of the sample: 50% of people have more than this number of people, 50% less. The researchers chose this indicator because single extreme high or low values affect it less than the average.
Experts have studied 116,922 declarations of officials from all regions of Russia. They were submitted by the heads of various ministries, departments, as well as deputies.
The final sample includes 89% of anti-corruption declarations of officials for 2020. It did not include duplicate documents that were submitted when one person held several positions at once. In addition, not all income data could be attributed to a specific region. The study also did not take into account the incomes of family members of officials, primarily their spouses and children, so the real gap in the level of well-being of civil servants and ordinary Russians is, presumably, even greater.