Ageing in Russia: a Regional Appraisal

Russia, in common with most industrial and post-industrial countries, is currently grappling with the challenge of population ageing. While there have been many studies of ageing at the national level, the regional differentials and consequences of such population change have been largely ignored for Russia, as indeed for elsewhere. In this study, we explore differentials in both the key drivers of ageing in Russia, as well as the outcome in both standard and ‘new’ demographic measures of ageing based upon the concept of ‘prospective ageing’. Our results show that the pace and scale of ageing – along with the nature of the underlying drivers – across Russia is highly uneven. Under a federal systems such as Russia, this means that the policy challenges related to population ageing will be differently felt at the regional level. On the flip side, any national policy intervention (such as raising the pension age) would have differential impacts across the country, and could well entrench existing regional inequalities.