Qualitative characteristics of population and the state of the economy: analysis of certain groups of Russian regions

According to the previously developed typology of Russian regions by the criteria of population quality, the regions were divided into ten groups. A detailed analysis of each group allows determining possible ways to improve the quality of the population in the Russian regions. This article begins to present the cycle of such studies with the analysis of three smallest groups: the first group includes Moscow and St. Petersburg, the second - the Republic of Dagestan, the Republic of Ingushetia, the Chechen Republic, the third - Nenets, Khanty-Mansi, Yamalo-Nenets autonomous okrugs and the Republic of Sakha (Yakutia). The first group of regions is the most prosperous in terms of quality characteristics of the population, here the main problem is the low natural growth of the population. The specificity of the North Caucasus republics in this aspect lies in high indicators of population quality with low material living standards that contradicts the previously statistically confirmed hypothesis of strong impact of quality of life on population quality. The conclusion has been made about high importance of national culture and traditions in these regions. At the same time, comparison of these republics among themselves has shown that traditions in some of them are weakening, and more attention should be paid to economic factors - monetary income, poverty and unemployment rates. These problems in the North Caucasus regions are in line with the theory of multilevel economy, and their solution requires restructuring of the economy on the basis of its technological and technical re-equipment. In the third group, on the contrary, high monetary income is accompanied by poor qualitative characteristics of the population, especially by rates of alcoholism and drug addiction. These phenomena are correlated with the level of unemployment, the growth of which is caused not only by the global crisis processes in the development of the oil and gas sector, but also by the depletion of highly profitable deposits in the Northern regions of the country, the need to develop hard-to-reach and hardly removable sources of oil and gas. The solution may be to change the structure of the economy of these regions in the direction of development of the natural raw materials processing sector.