Provision of living quarters of Russian pensioners' households with water pipeline as a prosperous old age factor

The article discusses the issue concerning provision of pensioners’ households with water supply in the context of the topic of prosperous old age. Our initial position is based on two basic assumptions. First, provision of the population, in particular pensioners, with clean drinking water is one of the basic conditions of well-being and quality of life factors. On the contrary, limited access to water is a violation of rights and leads to negative consequences for public health. The lack of access to clean drinking water for older persons directly in the home necessitates physical effort to bring it to the point of consumption, which limits household comfort and creates additional health risks. Second, the analysis should distinguish three variants of water pipeline systems organization: 1) presence of centralized water pipeline; 2) absence of centralized water pipeline, but presence of water pipelines supplying water from decentralized sources (wells, boreholes); 3) absence of any water pipeline. It is from these positions that the situation with piped water to pensioner households in the regions of contemporary Russia is analyzed. We used the data of the Comprehensive Observation of Living Conditions carried out by Rosstat for the period from 2014 to 2022 as an information base. The aim of the research is to analyze the availability of piped water in the households of Russian pensioners in the context of the problems of a prosperous old age. We revealed significant territorial differentiation of the constituent entities of the Russian Federation in aspects of access of pensioners’ households to piped water, and identified unfavorable regions where the problem of insufficient provision of the elderly population with safe drinking water supplied using centralized drinking water supply systems is most acute. The scientific novelty of the study consists in the substantiation and realization of own approach to the interpretation of indicators of drinking water supply for the elderly population as a category that has special, compared to other socio-demographic groups, characteristics characterized by the level of needs and health risks. The practical significance of the work is related to the possibility of clarifying the directions of public policy in the sphere of ensuring the social and domestic well-being of the older generation, taking into account the revealed heterogeneity of the Russian space in the distribution of water supply practices.