Unlike in Other Countries, Wealthier Russians Consume More Fast Food than Poorer Ones Do, HSE Study Finds

 Paul Goble

            Staunton, June 11 – In most countries, scholars says, most of the consumers of fast food are either young or poor, but in Russia, the patrons of fast food restaurants are older and better off, a reflection of both the need for greater income to purchase such food and the more rapid pace of life of those better off, a newly published HSE study says.

            The study, based on a survey of 4008 Russian adults in 2017, has now been published in the current issue of Economics and Human Biology (sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S1570677X22000430?dgcid=author) and summarized on the HSE webpage (iq.hse.ru/news/655003753.html).

            The study concluded that even though older and better off adults are concerned about the health consequences of fast food, most adult fast-food consumers in Russia are working full time at one or more jobs. It also found that the probability of consuming fast food increased with city size, limited only if workplaces had canteens of their own.

            The findings of this study explain both why the closure of Western fast-food establishments hit a more influential part of the population than many might have expected and also why this group was successful in lobbying the Kremlin to open Russian substitutes for Western firms now shuttered there.

            The regime had its own reasons for opening the substitute shops: time is money, and fast-food establishments allow people to take less time off from work. Over the longer term, of course, this pattern may mean that better off Russians will suffer the heath consequences of this kind of diet.