Demographic Resources of Russia: Variability of Approaches and Assessments

In the context of a deep demographic crisis faced by many countries in the world, the issue of identifying and using demographic development resources as a key component of national security is becoming important. This article continues a series of publications by the authors devoted to the study of fundamental concepts of demographic science. The aim of the article is a critical understanding and systematization of existing approaches to defining the term “demographic resource”, identifying common and contradictory interpretations in order to unify and clarify the terminology of demographic science. For this purpose, the article provides an overview of current studies by Russian and foreign authors in the field of population, presents their definitions of the listed terms, and identifies common and contradictory features. The authors identified four groups of the most common interpretations of “demographic resources”: population size, labor force, English-language and alternative interpretations. The authors also offer an interpretation of “demographic resources” as “prosperous young families with children”. An attempt was made to critically understand and generalize disparate approaches in order to systematize and unify the terminology of research in the field of population. The study used methods of comparative analysis, content analysis of scientific literature, as well as statistical analysis using current data from Rosstat. The novelty of the work lies in the proposal of the authors’ definition of the concept of “demographic resources”, taking into account the specifics of modern demographic challenges and meeting the tasks of public administration in the field of population. The main results are presented by a grouping of approaches, accompanied by a statistical assessment of the demographic resources of Russia. Future research will be aimed at a more in-depth analysis of each of the identified types of demographic resources, as well as the development of methodological recommendations for their practical use in the state demographic policy of Russia.