The Maternity Capital as a Tool of State Redistribution Policy

The relevance of the study is caused by the fact that since 2013, the proportion of low-income families with two or more children has been growing against the background of reductions in fertility in the Russian Federation. The hypothesis of the study is based on the assumption that with growing excessive inequality and poverty of the population, the maternity capital loses the function of stimulating fertility and becomes the only way for low-income families with children to improve their financial situation. The objective of the study is to substantiate the need to improve the state of redistributive policies through providing the maternity capital for each newborn starting with the first child to reduce large family poverty and the reproduction of poverty in the next generations, and to improve the quality of social resources through maintaining the assigned purpose of the maternity capital (housing, education, and health). The article analyzes the actual expenditure of the State under the Maternity Capital Program for 2007–2017 and the projected expenditure with regard to the introduction of additional measures to support families with children from 2019. An estimate of the necessary expenses for paying the maternity capital for each child from the National Wealth Fund is given. For wealthy families, it has been proposed to use an indirect negative tax. The authors give recommendations for improving the procedure of providing the maternity capital for reducing the reproduction of poverty through guaranteeing minimum start conditions for each child. The implementation of the proposed conceptual approach should be carried out in conjunction with reforming the system of taxation of income and individual property, and changing the provision of the maternity capital and targeted social support for families based on an assessment of their needs.