Home – Home – Jornals – Region: Economics and Sociology 2021 number 4

This article is devoted to the issues of modeling and forecasting mortality rates in the regions of the Russian Federation. The analysis showed that 2020 was characterized by a significant deterioration in the demographic situation and that the key reason was an increase in the number of deaths by 18%. Although excess mortality was also observed in most other countries, the authors do not set the task of assessing the impact of such an atypical situation as the coronavirus pandemic. The primary task is to develop measures to reduce the death rate under so-called “normal conditions”. Ensuring a high quality of life, in a sense, would alone be a factor to reduce the consequences of unforeseen situations. Our hypothesis is that the level of social infrastructure advancement largely determines the regional mortality and life expectancy. The goal is to develop an approach to modeling this impact and forming appropriate forward-looking estimates for the medium term. For that, we use methods of comparative, factor, correlation, and regression analysis, grouping methods, and scenario forecasting. As a result, we have formed a set of econometric models which describe the relationship between the death rate, life expectancy, the level of social infrastructure advancement, and how well the region’s potential benefits are actualized. The obtained forecast shows that the baseline scenario allows a decrease in the death rate in most Russian regions by 1.0-2.5% compared to 2019 and an increase in the average life expectancy up to 74.7 years. However, one needs to consider the law of diminishing marginal utility, which states that resources required to increase life expectancy will ever grow. Part of such resources will be allocated to developing social infrastructure. These results can be applied by public authorities to draft demographic policy measures.