The high and persistent level of income inequality limits the opportunities for economic growth and contributes to the persistence of a high poverty rate in Russia. Reducing inequality is integral to achieving the Sustainable Development Goals (SDG-10); thus, greater focus is needed to reduce income inequality. We assess income inequality based on a representative income and expenditure data collected at the micro level to determine the risk of increasing inequality and poverty in the context of specific socio-demographic groups and income sources. We look at the contribution of various household income sources to total income inequality, taking into account the differences in the weighting of income components, the unevenness of their distribution, and their correlation with the total distribution of income. The main data source is the project “The Russia Longitudinal Monitoring Survey-Higher School of Economics” (RLMS-HSE) for 2000–2018. Calculation of the elasticity of the Gini index by sources of total income for poor and non-poor households revealed their multidirectional impact on overall inequality. We show that social transfers in poor households do not help to reduce inequality. This indicates the need for closer attention to this phenomenon when making policy decisions connected with social policy. Moreover, the “hidden incomes” appear to be a factor reducing inequality for poor households within the framework of the accepted definitions and the formed sample of households.

The article suggests an original approach to economic security system indicators formation at micro level based on the assessment of changes in households' living and financial behavior under economic crisis. An econometric implementation based on the triangular recursive system of equations is used with a multivariate probit model, dealing with unobservable individual heterogeneity, with the bias atributed to omitted variables and endogeneity. The estimation was performed according to the representative survey of the population "The Russia Longitudinal Monitoring Survey-Higher School of Economics (RLMS-HSE) (RLMS-HSE, 2017).

Purpose: The paper demonstrates the authors‘ approach for the identification of groups of individuals who are prone to manifestations of various deviations in financial behavior. Design/Methodology/Approach: The research is based on empirical data from a survey of 912 senior students using a specially designed questionnaire. Applying a latent class analysis technique we distribute students into groups that differ in their attitude toward money, financial literacy, financial strategies, risk appetite, and a propensity to deviant behavior. Findings: The study showed that more prone to deviant financial strategies are mainly young men, prone to financial risk, enrolled in the commercial form of education, natives of regional subordination cities, those who not inclined to innovative financial strategies. More likely to be involved in illegal financial schemes those who we classified as “spendthrifts” from families without high income, “savers” and “reasonable” from high-income families. Practical Implications: Research results can be used to formulate policies to improve population financial literacy, as well as to adjust economic policy in general. There is a need for financial education programs to pay special attention to the issues of countering fraud, preventing involvement in money laundering and terrorism financing (ML/FT) processes. Originality/Value: The socio-demographic portrait of students most likely to engage in illegal financial strategies is not clearly formed. Individuals may be subject to financial deviations in some cases, with the purposeful influence of certain persons or circumstances.