MOSCOW, September 27 (RIA Novosti) – While half of Russians say they have friends with a big age difference, and nearly as many have friends of a different sex or income bracket, only 39 percent have friends of a different ethnicity and fewer than one-third have friends of a different faith, according to a poll released Friday.
Friendship across generations was reported by 50 percent of respondents, even more among 18- to 24-year-olds (57 percent) and 25- to 34-year-olds (55 percent), the state-run Russian Public Opinion Research Center (VTsIOM) said, citing research conducted last month.
The poll also found that 45 percent of Russians have friends of the opposite sex, with men more likely to acknowledge having women friends than vice versa, at 46 percent and 40 percent, respectively.
The same share of respondents, 45 percent, said they have friends with incomes that differ from their own.
But just 39 percent said they have friends of ethnicities different from theirs, and merely 30 percent reported friendship with people of a religious faith other than their own.
The poll was conducted August 24-25 using a nationwide sample of 1,600 adults across 130 residential areas in 42 Russian regions. The statistical margin of error did not exceed 3.4 percent.
