Regional priorities in the utilities’ infrastructure upgrading in rural areas for improving quality of life of the population (part one)

This article considers the problem of rural areas’ significant lagging behind urban territories of the Russian Federation in terms of the utilities’ infrastructure development that comprises water supply, sewage systems, heating and gas supply. We use for our analysis six indicators from the Rosstat surveys entitled «The Comprehensive Monitoring of the Living Conditions of the Population» as of 2014 and 2022 reflecting access of ca. 18.5 thousand households in rural settlements of 82 regions of the Russian Federation (excluding three federal cities) to water pipelines, hot water supply, up-to-date sewage systems, availability of up-to-date toilets, heating systems as well as gas supply. Part One of the article shows that the rural households’ quality of life is lagging behind the urban ones most considerably in terms of access to sewage systems (50,6 percentage points (pp) less households across all the country), up-to-date toilets (29,3 pp less) and hot water supply (21,0 pp less). The Central and North Caucasian federal districts are the leaders by average indicators while the Siberian and Far Eastern federal districts critically fall behind the other federal districts by the degree of development of the utilities’ infrastructure. The largest gap between urban and rural areas in average terms exists in such regions of the Russian Federation as the Republic of Sakha (Yakutia), the Komi Republic, Irkutsk Oblast, the Nenets Autonomous Okrug, the Republic of Tuva, the Republic of Karelia, the Republic of Buryatia, Amur Oblast, Tyumen Oblast and Krasnoyarsk Krai. In Part One and Part Two of the article, we present six classifications with six groups of the subjects of the Russian Federation by the degree of lagging of rural settlements from urban areas by each component of the utilities’ infrastructure considered. Part Two of the article presents a method and calculations of values of the composite index of the utilities’ infrastructure underdevelopment in rural areas for 82 regions of the Russian Federation. Based on the results obtained, we compose a typology encompassing seven types of regions of the Russian Federation that may serve as a foundation for setting or adjusting regional priorities of the state programmes aimed at developing components of the utilities’ infrastructure in rural areas.