MOSCOW: The richest 10 per cent of Muscovites are 41 times richer than the poorest 10 per cent, a gap that dwarfs the national divide, Russia’s state statistics service said on Thursday.

“Moscow’s richest 10 per cent earned 41 times more in 2006 than the poorest 10 per cent,” state statistics service Assistant Director Leonid Arshon said. Nationwide, there was a 15-fold gap in earnings, he said -- up from a gap of 10 times in 2001 and 14 times in 2003.

Russian Academy of Sciences economist Ruslan Grinberg warned that in countries where the gap was a factor of 10 or higher, “the conditions are created for social disorder.”

“The only place that rule doesn’t hold is in America, where the coefficient holds steady at 10-12. But there it is considered normal, since their philosophy differs from ours,” he told Izvestia newspaper.

Average monthly wages in Russia at the end of 2006 were $312. The service put the official poverty level at 15 per cent nationwide, while Kremlin economic advisor Arkady Dvorkovich has said the real level may be over 25 per cent.—AFP