Demographic processes and regional social-demographic problems in Saint-Petersburg and the Leningrad Region (1991-2011)

Abstract

During the period under investigation, the problems of depopulation, as well as the aging of the population, affected the country as a whole, as well as Saint-Petersburg and the Leningrad Region in particular. From 1991 to 2011, the population of Saint-Petersburg fell by 425 thousand people, or 9%, and Leningrad region - 44 thousand people, or 2.5%. Such a reduction in the population in the region caused a reduction in labor resources and adversely affected the socio-economic development of the city and the region. The main cause of the demographic crisis, which adversely affects the economic development of the region, is low birth rate and high mortality. For 20 years there have been fundamental changes in the type of natural reproduction of the population. Russia in the 1990’s made the second demographic transition, caused not by the improvement of the standard of living of the population, as in the highly developed countries of the world, but, on the contrary, by a deep and prolonged socioeconomic crisis.