Fertility and Women Life Expectancy in Krasnoyarsk Territory: Social and Economic Transition and Intraregional Demographic Response

Abstract

Demographic processes are often studied one-dimensionally, i.e. the processes are described through dynamics of one demographic parameter. Meanwhile, relationships between different demographic parameters are of general interest. Tolstikhina et al. (Tolstikhina, Gavrikov, Khlebopros, Okhonin, 2013) showed that fertility and life expectancy are negatively correlated among countries of the world. The same relationship of fertility and life expectancy has been studied by us in this research at an intraregional level through the example of Krasnoyarsk Territory. The demographic data from 1995 to 2013 have been used to describe dynamics of the relationship. The main method used was weighted fitting of the data by a linear function, with weights being the population of the territory administrative regions. No statistically significant relationship between the fertility and female life expectancy has been found in 1995, i.e. the regression line on the graph was practically horizontal. However, a negative correlation has been registered in 2000 and, as the fertility grew between 2000 and 2013, the correlation appeared to be stronger and stronger. These findings are discussed on the background of the social and economic transition that Russia experienced since 1990s. Dramatic turmoil of those times may have broken a ‘normal’ course of demographic processes so that relationships between demographic parameters responded to it by the absence of correlation. Through an adaptation of the population to the new reality coupled with an average improvement of social and economic situation the correlation between the demographic parameters restored and took the shape that is characteristic of the world countries dataset

Рассматривается демографическая ситуация в Красноярском крае в период с 1995 по 2013 г. В статье используются методы вычисления параметров линейной регрессии между ожи- даемой продолжительностью жизни и фертильностью женщин, проведена процедура «взве- шивания» демографических показателей. Обнаружено, что Красноярский край и в период социально-экономических трансформаций 1990-х и 2000-х годов следует общемировой тен- денции, характеризующейся обратной зависимостью между ожидаемой продолжительно- стью жизни и фертильностью женщин. Выявлено, что значимая зависимость между ис- следованными демографическими показателями может нарушаться и восстанавливаться в процессе адаптации к новым условиям жизни как в городских, так и в сельских муниципальных образованиях