Current Household Economic Situation
| Region | % neutral or positive | % Russian mean |
| Volgo-Vyatka | 53 | 118 |
| Volga | 49 | 109 |
| Central | 47 | 104 |
| RUSSIAN MEAN | 45 | 100 |
| Northern | 45 | 99 |
| Central Black Earth | 44 | 98 |
| North Caucasus | 44 | 98 |
| Far East | 43 | 96 |
| West Siberia | 43 | 95 |
| East Siberia | 42 | 93 |
| Urals | 40 | 89 |
| North-west | 38 | 85 |
| Source: VCIOM. Russian nationwide surveys, 1997. |
Even in a developed market economy, money is not the only measure of a household's economic situation, for people with higher incomes may be more ambitious and more dissatisfied than people with low incomes, and stable incomes tend to encourage people to adapt their expectations to a level they find satisfactory. In Russia the evaluation that people make of their household economic situation is even more important, because neither earnings nor prices are stable.
When Russians are asked to describe their household's economic circumstances, less than five per cent describe them as very good or good, and only two per cent have no opinion. The largest group--41 per cent--describe their situation as neither good nor bad, as against 53 per cent saying their conditions are bad or very bad. Only in the Volgo-Vyatka region do as many as half the people describe their situation as not bad, and in the Volga region almost half do so.
Dissatisfaction with the household economic situation is the norm, but dissatisfaction is not extreme. For every two Russians saying things are very bad, three simply characterize their situation as bad. Dissatisfaction is highest in the North-west, where less than two in five describe their circumstances as so-so or better.