5.7. Earnings Incentives - Money Psychology

The most important is the economic incentive, when a person, a family, an au pair does not have enough money for physical survival according to the standards of this social stratum. People are forced to seek additional income, although the culprit in this case is the imperfect system of income distribution and social policy in the country.

Psychological incentives are not directly related to income. In different countries there is one or another fork between the minimum and maximum incomes. In most cases, people are satisfied with this, since the household and social needs of different strata are satisfied. In fact, one needs a palace, another is satisfied with a city apartment. The needs for space, consumption, social circle, leisure are individual and depend not only on the social environment, but also on the human psyche. The role of social policy is to assess these differences and satisfy the needs of people of different lifestyles according to the standards of a particular society.

Money helps a person to occupy a niche corresponding to his status. In our country, the territorial stratification is only beginning to take shape, but in the West people of a certain level of income and position should use the appropriate shops, settle in the respective areas, etc. misers, their character deteriorates, diseases appear ... (especially difficult for immigrants, who often receive less pay for their work). In the domestic conditions of the Soviet period, the variation “to be no worse than others” has become a variation of this desire for conformity. Money (salary and additional earnings) was spent on the external attributes of belonging to a certain circle and social stratum. This was often done to the detriment of family relations, child rearing, leisure expenses (evidenced by the occurrence of dysfunctional children in wealthy families with good housing conditions). In the same semantic row are the money (as well as things bought on them), earned for the sake of prestige. In contrast to the Western variant of occupying a social niche, our compatriot, rather, was looking for a comfortable psychological niche. Only now, with marked social stratification, does the occupation of the social niche begin to play a role.