A district official in southern Russia survived a month on the local minimum wage of 6,400 rubles ($220), but lost 5.5 kilograms during the experiment, which wrapped up on Thursday.
However, Dmitry Zhertovsky saved up 75 rubles from the experiment during which he mostly subsided on vegetables, canned meat and instant noodles.
Zhertovsky allotted about one-third of the 6,400 rubles for groceries, spending the rest on utilities and various non-food items.
However, the 28-year-old official from the Krasnodar region did not count the money spent on transportation and clothes, as well as supporting his wife and child.
The official staged his experiment to shame local entrepreneurs into raising official salaries for their employees. Zhertovsky said earlier most of them likely set salaries at minimum wage and pay the rest under the table to avoid taxes.
Some 20 local businessmen agreed to raise minimum salaries for their employees to 9,000 rubles a month thanks to Zhertovsky, the local television Channel Nine Kuban reported.
In 2011, a teenager in Sverdlovsk region in the Urals spent a month on the state-approved minimum food basket, valued at 2,600 rubles at the time, losing 2.5 kilograms and developing “serious health problems” over the experiment.
The same year, a reporter of the Moskovsky Komsomolets daily tried to live a week in the Moscow region on the weekly the minimum wage of 1,500 rubles, but ran out of money and reported “going nuts” over financial problems.
