Demographic potential of territories: Assessment approaches and measurement experience

In the context of pronounced regional differentiation of Russia’s demographic development, an urgent area of research is the working out of a scientifically based methodological approach to assessing the demographic potential of territories to ensure competent management of their development. The aim of the research is to systematize theoretical and methodological approaches to the study of the demographic potential of territories, to work out and test methods for its assessment at the regional level. The paper considers the approaches to the essence and structure of demographic potential, analyzes the indicators used in Russian and foreign scientific research to study the demographic potential of territories, and systematizes the methods of its assessment. The research shows that the use of several methods allows a comprehensive assessment of its condition and dynamics. An index methodology for assessing the demographic potential of territories is presented, and the calculation of two integral indices is proposed – quantitative and qualitative demographic potential (QuanDPI and QualDPI). At the first stage, a set of indicators was formed for the construction of indices (a priori and a posteriori), at the second stage, their calculation was performed. The principal component method is chosen as the method of convolution of private variables into integral indices. The index methodology was tested in Russia’s regions for the time period from 2019 to 2023. The information base was compiled by Rosstat statistics. Based on the calculation results, the leading and outsider regions were identified for each index. The grouping of regions by the size of the QuanDPI and QualDPI made it possible to construct index ratio matrices. The conducted research has confirmed the close relationship between the quantitative and qualitative components of the demographic potential of the territories.