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MONEY CAN’T BUY HAPPINES, BUT POLITICAL LOYALTY CAN

A. Lukashenko likes to play off the beginning of nineties when, under “nationalists”, average salary amounted to $ 20, against “fat” aughties. According to official information from Belstat, in February 2014 (information for March was not yet available when the article was prepared) an average Belarusian earned 5.4 million rubles or $ 557.
In dollar equivalent average salary increased 28-fold over the past 20 years, while the share of Belarusians considering themselves poor decreased from 17.7% down to 10.8%, i.e. 1.6-fold (Table 1). You shouldn’t be surprised by this lack of proportion. Poverty and wealth are relative.
Today and in the beginning of nineties majority of Belarusians assess their financial standing as average. The reason is clear as day. When someone is constantly told that being poor means that he is a douche and a looser, then classifying himself as a part of middle class means that he wants to be “like everyone”. To confirm this status he spends his money for attributes of apparent wealth – an expensive phone, fashionable clothes and so on.
Table 2 shows a socio-demographic portrait of Belarusians, who evaluate their financial standing as poor, lower than average and average (groups with higher than average and high incomes are excluded because of their small number).
Table 2. Distribution of answers to the question “How do you evaluate your financial standing?” depending on the attitude to A. Lukashenko and socio-demographic characteristics*, %
Characteristics
Poverty
Lower than average
Average
Attitude to A. Lukashenko:
Trust
5.8
25.7
60.1
Distrust
17.4
36.9
42.1
Sex:
Male
10.5
31.9
49.8
Female
11.0
31.4
52.6
Age:
18-29
11.8
31.5
53.2
30-39
11.4
31.2
47.9
40-49
9.0
31.2
50.2
50-59
12.6
29.5
53.6
60 +
9.4
34.2
51.3
Education:
Primary
19.6
30.4
46.7
Incomplete secondary
13.1
34.6
49.7
Secondary
11.2
34.6
49.4
Vocational
10.5
27.6
53.3
Higher
6.2
30.5
54.5
Settlement type:
Minsk
12.7
33.2
52.1
Rural villages
13.2
33.2
46.5
Average income per family member:
Up to 1.2 million rubles
28.0
41.9
29.0
1.2-1.9 million rubles
17.4
35.9
45.0
1.9-3.8 million rubles
7.3
32.7
55.0
Over 3.8 million rubles
6.6
21.9
57.1
* Table is read horizontally
The first thing that sticks out is the dependency of financial standing’s perception on the attitude to A. Lukashenko. The share of poor people is three times (!) lower among his supporters than among his opponents. At the same time sex, age and settlement type don’t have any significant influence. But education has: almost every fifth (19.6%) Belarusian with primary education considers that he’s poor, while this share among licentiates is considerably lower – 6.2%.
While the share of poor amounts to 10.8% on average, 6.6% of Belarusians with more than 3.8 million rubles’ income per family member consider themselves poor. Indeed, some people cry because they have no feet, others cry because they have no shoes.
31% of respondents answered affirmatively the question “Do you think you are a happy person?” in March 2014. 13.4% think that are not happy. More than half of respondents (52.9%) chose the variant “Depends”.
If a citizen of Belarus wants to feel happy, then he should make up his mind about his relationship to “batka”, for this purpose it is preferable to trust him (Table 3). Compare: the share of happy people among A. Lukashenko’s supporters amounts to 53.2%, among his opponents only 35.4% are happy, and among those, who didn’t make up their minds, only 11.4% are happy! To explain this paradox let’s remember the words of Ostap Bender, the main protagonist of “The Little Golden Calf”: “Girls love young, long-legged, politically literate ones” (emphasis added).
Table 3. Distribution of answers to the question “Do you think you are a happy person?” depending on the attitude to A. Lukashenko and socio-demographic characteristics*, %
Characteristics
Yes
It depends
No
Attitude to A. Lukashenko:
Trust
53.2
48.0
13.1
Distrust
35.4
59.5
13.5
Sex:
Male
28.8
54.9
14.2
Female
32.8
51.2
12.8
Age:
18-29
33.4
52.4
13.0
30-39
32.7
55.1
10.3
40-49
29.3
58.9
10.0
50-59
26.3
54.6
16.0
60 +
32.5
45.3
16.8
Education:
Primary
35.5
39.8
20.4
Incomplete secondary
26.3
43.4
24.3
Secondary
26.9
56.7
14.6
Vocational
32.4
52.9
11.7
Higher
37.5
55.3
6.1
Settlement type:
Minsk
11.0
80.8
6.8
Rural villages
37.0
44.4
15.6
Average income per family member:
Up to 1.2 million rubles
28.0
40.9
29.0
1.2-1.9 million rubles
26.0
48.6
21.1
1.9-3.8 million rubles
37.7
48.3
11.2
Over 3.8 million rubles
24.1
69.0
6.0
* Table is read horizontally
This is not a joke. A person, who cannot pin down his political preferences in divided Belarusian society, can be considered as an outcast. Such a person is not only beyond politics, he’s probably beyond social life in general. You cannot feel happy under these conditions.
Despite popular conversations on the heavy burden of women, the share of happy women is higher than the share of happy men, though the difference is insignificant (+4 points). There is no significant difference between young and old people as well. The lowest share of happy people is observed in the pre-retirement age group (50-59 years old). It can be explained: the advances of youth are already gone, the advances of retirement age are still to come.
Despite the popular Western idea that education makes people free but unhappy (E. M. Remarque), this idea doesn’t proliferate upon people with higher education in Belarus. The reason for it probably lies in the fact that their internal freedom is almost the same as the freedom of their compatriots with primary education. The latter in the overwhelming majority of cases (93.5%) are supporters of A. Lukashenko, and this is an additional reason to feel happy.
The biggest surprise of Table 3 lies in the more than 3-fold difference of “relative density” of happy people between residents of villages and Minsk citizens. The reason for this is the abnormally high share of Minsk residents that feel themselves now happy, and then unhappy (the variant “it depends”).
Fast-moving life of a megalopolis is fundamentally different from sluggish life of a country province. This dynamism causes uncertainty expressed in the everyday formulation “it depends”.
For the same reason the “density” of happy people among Belarusians with an average income per family member exceeding 3.8 million rubles is lower, than among people who earn less. Money comes with a price. They need to swim in it, to risk. Hence the second result in column “it depends”.
If we “interbreed” the answers to the questions “How do you evaluate your financial standing?” and “Do you think you are a happy person?” we won’t see any surprises. The share of happy people among Belarusians, who qualify their financial standing as poor, amounts to 14.2%, lower than average – 21.7%, average – 37.1%.
Happy Belarusians are more active in fulfilling their civil duties during the elections than their unhappy compatriots – 37.5% vs. 24.8%. They also trust official results to a greater extent – 38% vs. 21.3%.
According to Marx, poor people have nothing to lose but their chains. Belarusians belonging to a virtual middle class stick to the stability. Living in the world of illusions and hopes, they don’t cause problem for the powers. The powers in return guarantee them happy chair days with a low pension.