Transfers of Economic Resources within the Family as a Source of Formation of Non­Financial Wealth of the Population in Russia

Abstract

In the post-Soviet period, Russian households have become owners of fi­nancial and non-financial assets on a massive scale, i.e. they have accumu­lated (albeit unevenly) wealth that can be passed on by inheritance or as a gift to subsequent generations. The study focuses on intra-family inter- generational transfers of accumulated economic resources, a new object of study for Russian social science. The objectives of the study are: a) to assess the scale and dynamics of involvement of Russian households in in- tra-family transfers of economic resources and b) to structure and describe the ways in which the extended family participates in forming the property portfolio of individuals and/or households. To solve the first problem, the data from the All-Russian Household Survey on Consumer Finances for 2013–2024 are used, and to solve the second problem, the materials of semi-structured interviews with city residents, mainly from the Novosi­birsk agglomeration, conducted in 2023–2024 are used. The theoretical and methodological foundation of the study was formed by publications of foreign scientists on the involvement of households in intergenerational wealth transfers, the process of re-familialization, reflecting the grow­ing role of the extended family in the formation of economic security of younger generations in modern conditions. Email: bogtan@rambler.ru Analysis of the All-Russian Household Survey on Consumer Finances data revealed that over the past decade, despite the positive dynamics of the involvement of Russian households in intergenerational transfers of economic resources, the latter, as in other countries, are not a widespread source of formation of the household property portfolio: in each year at the time of the survey, no more than a quarter of households (26.7% in 2024) owned at least one residential property or land plot received by inheritance or as a gift. The transfer of non-financial assets by inheritance is a more frequent type of transfer than a gift, and the main transferred asset is housing. In addition to the di­rect transfer of property, practices of facilitating the formation of household property in the extended family include providing housing to relatives for rent-free residence in order to accumulate savings and acquire non­financial assets (approximately 8% of households occupy housing without rent that does not belong to them, but to relatives or acquaintances), and using financial resources of relatives received as a gift or inheritance to purchase (or build) housing and other assets. Based on the interviews, a chain of interrelated phenomena was traced  “an event that acts as a trigger for an economic transfer – a method for implementing the transfer  a result of (non-)acceptance of the transfer”, empirical representatives of each element of this chain were determined. A variant of the contour of the mechanism of influence of intra-family intergenerational transfers of economic resources on the formation of non-financial wealth of the household is presented.