Social workers tend to believe that society underestimates the complexity of their mission and fails to fully appreciate the gift of caring and compassion that they offer their clients. Experts warn that social work may lead to burnout, unless practitioners are taught the skills of managing their emotions in dealing with clients and equipped with standard algorithms facilitating their 'emotional work' and thus helping to alleviate stress, according to Olga Simonova, Deputy Head of the HSE Department of General Sociology.

Russian businesses have been slow in adopting new media tools. Many companies continue to rely on official websites to reach out to customers and avoid using social media and blogs, as they are not ready for an equal dialogue with external audiences, according to Iosif Dzyaloshinsky and Maria Pilgun, professors of the HSE Faculty of Communication, Media and Design.

Relations between Muscovites and migrant workers from the CIS are plagued by myths circulating in the mass consciousness. In her research, Yulia Florinskaya, a Senior Researcher with HSE’s Institute of Demography, refutes prevalent statements that migrants not only take jobs from Muscovites, but also seriously increase the burden on healthcare and intentionally maintain illegal status.

The proportion of interethnic marriages in Russia varies widely depending on ethnicity. How common mixed-ethnicity families are depends largely on couples' ability to overcome cultural, religious and social differences between their ethnic groups and also on settlement and migration patterns. In his ground-breaking research, Eugeny Soroko, Senior Research Fellow at the HSE Institute of Demography, measured the relative ‘distances’ between ethnic Russians and ten other ethnic groups using a tool he invented – the mixed family matrix.

International companies engage in social responsibility in order to to improve their reputation, be more competitive, and to gain political benefits and some degree of control over society. In Russia, however, businesses convert social investment into informal privileges granted to them by government, according to a paper by Olga Kuzina, Professor of the HSE Department of Economic Sociology, and Marina Chernysheva, postgraduate student at the same department.

Migrants from Central Asia in Moscow are often involved in hard physical work and live in bad conditions, both of which affect their health. But the access to medical aid is complicated for them due to their social isolation. As a result, foreign labourers use alternative strategies of therapy: from self-treatment, which is fraught with exacerbating the condition, to going to private ‘ethnic’ clinics. Daniil Kashnitsky, Assistant Researcher at the HSE Institute for Social Development Studies (ISDS), analyzed the medical aid for migrants in the Russian capital.

Today's big businesses in Russia may never become family dynasties. Only a few business owners have succession plans in place, but many have never considered the issue, for reasons ranging from their heirs being too young to avoiding conflict in the family to resenting the lack of institutions in Russia to support effective wealth succession. Instead, most entrepreneurs are planning to retain control of their business for as long as possible, according to researchers from the HSE Faculty of Social Sciences and the Skolkovo Wealth Transformation Centre. For the first time ever, they examined the attitudes of Russia's major capital owners towards business and wealth succession.

Young Russians are in no hurry to start living on their own. The age of moving out from the parental home has increased from 18-20 for previous generations to 23-25 for today's youth. Instead, young people are spending more time in search of themselves and taking longer to get an education and choose a partner, according to a study by Ekaterina Mitrofanova, Junior Research Fellow at the HSE Institute of Demography, and Alina Dolgova, student at the HSE Faculty of Social Sciences.

Emigration from Russia has changed significantly over the last decade. The potential for ethnic repatriation has almost been exhausted, but other factors have become stronger in the population outflow, such as reunion with families and trips for education. Such emigration is largely determined by differences in the quality of life and policies in host countries, which welcome young, educated, qualified people with a certain level of income, said Mikhail Denisenko, Deputy Director of the HSE Institute of Demography, in his presentation at the XVI April International Academic Conference at HSE.

Maternity capital has supported numerous families in regions across the country, helping people solve their housing problems. At the same time, many people have not accessed these funds, as the programme is quite limited. Maternity capital is not very useful when buying an apartment in the city, as it does not go very far, and two other options for using it – towards children’s education or the mother’s pension – are longer-term issues, noted Elena Gorina, Senior Research Fellow at the HSE’s Institute for Social Development Studies / Center for Studies of Income and Living Standards, during the XVI April International Academic Conference at HSE.

Russia’s current demographic dynamics seem to be positive. Life expectancy is growing, and the population is growing, not only by means of migration from other post-Soviet countries, but also by natural increase, even if it is not big yet. At the same time, researchers assess the near demographic future with moderate optimism, which is mostly due to the forming age structure of the population, said Anatoly Vishnevsky, Director of the HSE Institute of Demography, in his report.

In an environment where the natural-resources growth model is exhausted, human capital becomes the Russian economy's key competitive advantage. The problem of how the state, business and citizens can develop and invest in it was the main theme for the plenary discussion 'Social Policy Priorities' which took place on 7 April at the HSE's XVI April International Confernce on Modernizing the Economy and Society.