Assessment of the Well-Being of Members of Large Families in Russia, Taking into Account the Subjective Component

Abstract

The article aims to assess the well-being of families raising three or more minor children. The author’s assessment relies on the most commonly used approach in Russian and foreign scholarly literature, according to which well-being is considered as a complex category that includes both objective and subjective compo-nents. In recent years, there has been an improvement in the standard of living of Russian large house-holds, i.e., the indicators that make up the objective component. The empirical basis of the study was formed by the microdata of the RLMS for 2020 and 2024. It has been demonstrated that objective social reality contradicts the subjective one: the low-income population ignores income deprivation and feels, in terms of income, on average higher than those who objectively have a higher income. It was found that the objective and subjective components of well-being are not always directly related. Parents with many children, even with a low level of individual income, are generally satisfied with life and happy, and for several aspects of life, their average sat-isfaction scores exceed similar indicators among parents with many children who have a higher income. The study establishes a correlation between the overall level of happiness and life satisfaction with satisfaction in-dicators in certain areas, as well as a correlation between satisfaction indicators in certain areas with each oth-er.