Analysis of economic welfare of the population basedon the purchasing power of the Russian ruble

Introduction. The article is relevant because an adequate assessment of purchasing power allows us to better understand the state of the economy, inflation, and the population’s living standards. For companies and individual entrepreneurs, knowledge of the ruble’s purchasing power helps plan prices, costs, and income. The article aims to assess the ruble’s purchasing power as a tool for analyzing and forecasting economic processes. Materials and methods. Publications in university journals, dissertations, and peer-reviewed articles on purchasing power, inflation, and economic indicators. Official statistical data: Data from the Federal State Statistics Service (Rosstat), the Central Bank of Russia. Research findings. According to experts, actual inflation for 2021 in Russia exceeded 25% (and food inflation exceeded 42%). There is every reason to believe that the official inflation rate is only a part of the whole, the actual inflation rate, which is a posteriori for the mass consumer and causes intuitive doubt about its reliability, since the actual situation in the market of consumer goods and services, well, in no way corresponds to the data of ‘collusive statistics’. Conclusion. Whether the inflation rate is calculated correctly or incorrectly by the statistical agency (and the purchasing power index of Russian citizens’ money is not calculated at all), it actually converts into a decrease in the real income of the population and an increase in the scale of the poor population.