Natalia Zubarevich
Director of the Regional Programme of the Independent Social Prognosis Institute
The investment boom in Russia is generating euphoria and great expectations, but new opportunities are intensifying the competition for human resources at every level — between countries, regions and cities. For our country, where since time immemorial human labour has come cheap and has moved in a «western direction», this is a very significant change that demands a reassessment of our whole system of priorities.
This change has not yet taken place: it is prevented by «calming» factors — the low level of in-country mobility of a still poor population, the virtually closed border for labour migration to the West, and hopes of attracting Russian-speaking immigrants from CIS countries. However, as people’s incomes increase, so will their mobility. And the border for migration of labour to the West is not closed for good, and when the situation changes, it will be too late to study the examples of Latvia and Poland, where the drain of qualified manpower to EU countries has reached what they call «industrial proportions». Statistics of Russian legal migration show that our fellow-countrymen do not return to Russia — quite different immigrants come our way: workers, and more often than not illegal ones.
The concept that high-quality human resources are the basis for the country’s future development is growing gradually along with the depopulation. In major Russian cities and in towns around the capital the authorities have already experienced the effects of competition. Moscow sucks up the best human resources like a vacuum cleaner. Not for nothing does Moscow’s mayor Luzhkov like talking about restrictions on immigration: the capital does not need to make any effort to attract manpower, and there is plenty to choose from. And the prognosis for Moscow is obvious — it will continue to attract immigrants, as do all the world’s major cities.
However, a prognosis for Russia as a whole, where there are very great regional variations in human resources, is more difficult to make. Where will they be concentrated and of what quality will they be? Is it possible to influence the process of the territorial concentration of human capital? The powerful inertia of socio-demographic processes forces us to look to the future, ignoring established regional development trends. It would be better to focus on the cities, since human capital is concentrated in the cities, but city statistics are, unfortunately, extremely unreliable.
According to all the forecasts, demographic resources will decline, most of all in the older regions of the European Central and North-West Regions, with the exception of the two capital conurbations. The prospects for the medium term are that natural population growth will be maintained in only 6-7% of Russian regions. Measures to stimulate the birth rate are not capable of solving the problem of depopulation, since its proportions are so great: over 70% of the population live in regions with significant natural wastage (0.5 — 1.5% per year), and 16% of them live in regions with an extremely high rate between 1 and 1.5%. Demographic processes are sluggish, so natural wastage will continue to «squeeze» the habitable space, especially quickly in the ageing regions of European Russia. The demographic resources of the southern republics remain the last resort of a country which will dry up in the course of a generation or two.
Possibilities for the use of immigrant resources are limited: immigration has decreased by five times in real terms since the 1990s. The directions of migration have also changed as a result of stress factors being replaced by economic factors. In the 1990s it was the southern and western regions of Russia that received the main flow of immigrants, but since 2000 these regions have retained only small pockets of this flow. The country is seeing the restoration of the central-peripheral vector of migration characteristic of previous decades: the population is leaving the peripheral and less developed regions and is concentrating itself in the largest conurbations. This return to the long-term trend of the 20th century means that modern patterns of migration are settled and will continue for the foreseeable future. According to the estimates of Zh.A. Zayonchovskaya1, immigration will compensate for natural wastage only in the Moscow conurbation — in St. Petersburg there are already insufficient immigrant resorces.
The flow of migrants from the northern and southern regions has stabilised at a lower level, and now depends on the balance of supply and demand on local labour markets. Whereas the economy of eastern regions will grow more quickly and attractive jobs will appear, the flow of immigrants will decrease still further. However, there is no point in hoping for a substantial flow of immigrants into eastern regions, even with a state incentive policy. As a resource in short supply, the population will be able to pick and choose attractive places to live.
The possibilities of immigration from abroad, in the author’s opinion, are clearly overrated. Between 2001 and 2004 the recorded flow of immigrants compensated for only 9% of natural wastage, and 12-18% in 2005 and 2006. The positive trend of the growth of immigration to Russia is largely a statistical phenomenon, accounted for by the legalisation of immigrants already living in the country. It is obvious that without encouraging immigration from other countries it will be impossible to solve the problem of the growing shortage of labour resources. A great deal will depend on the policy pursued by the state, which is as yet vague — immigrants are both welcomed and driven out. However, even a successful policy for attracting immigrants will be unable to compensate for the reductions in population in those Central and North-West regions with the highest natural wastage. Immigration from China and Central Asia will increase under any policy — their influence will be noticeable in the area from the Urals to the Far East, but forecasting the tempo of the growth of external immigration is a dubious business. Moreover, low-qualified immigrants cannot substantially improve the quality of the population. The declared policy of relocating Russians from the CIS to eastern regions will not compensate for the drain of qualified local people on account of the shortage of highly-paid jobs.
On the whole, the prospects for the country’s demographic resources are not optimistic. In a territorial context two vectors are inevitable: firstly, the population will move to the west and the south, and secondly, it will be concentrated in the large conurbations, and not only in the form of immigration — peripheral and ageing agricultural districts will be depopulated more quickly. Against this backround, it is quite obvious who is winning the competition for demographic resources: the large conurbations, two or three southern regions with better living conditions, and a few regions with a high standard of living.
However, the problem is not only in numbers — depopulation sharply increases the significance of the quality of the population: its mobility, the modernisation of its way of life, working motivations, growth of education and improvements in health. Regional variations in population quality are dependent on long-term factors: unequal access to economic resources, the population’s way of life, the socio-cultural environment of regions and cities, migration trends (districts with an influx of immigrants have a more adaptable population, while for districts with an outflow the reverse is true), and so on.
There are no standard indicators of population quality; it can only be evaluated by circumstantial evidence. None of the indicators gives an entirely reliable picture for the country’s regions. Let us start with higher education, an indicator that is traditionally used to evaluate the quality of the population. In Russia the move towards mass higher education is coming to an end; from the mid-1990s it has become increasingly regionalized, and it would appear that we can expect an extenuation of regional variations in the standard of education and the qualifications of the workforce. However, the proportion of employees in the urban population with a higher education is still more than twice that in the regions (Diagram 1). The advantages of the two capitals in their federal districts reflect a «modernization broadside», the degree to which population quality in the regions is lagging behind the country’s major conurbations. The level of education of employees in the Urals is also low, and this will be an obstacle to the modernization of its industrial cities. Most of the regions in the Volga Federal District have similar problems. It will take a generation (twenty years or more) for regional variations to be reduced, and this is a very long time in terms of the country’s development.
 |
|
Diagram 1. Share of people having higher education in the urban population. Russian only. % |
The higher education indicator also reveals other aspects. In the labour markets of poorly developed republics with a younger population and, as a rule, a higher level of unemployment, a division has occurred: the better educated section of the workforce is in demand, so the standard of education in the working population is at its maximum, while low-qualified workers are left out in the cold. This means that, with the expected increase in the number of new jobs, there will be a problem of «shortage in plenty» (i.e. the low qualifications and poor adaptability of the republics’ numerous unemployed youth). Besides that, a high proportion of employees with higher education does not always mean an improvement in the quality of the workforce. In the Southern Federal District, the leader according to this indicator, the main reason was the accelerated move towards mass, low-quality higher education, the «buying of degrees».
A clearer picture for prognosis is provided by the vital indicator of health and the modernization of the population’s way of life — life-expectancy. In Russia this indicator fell during the first five years of economic growth and remains disastrously low: 65 for the population as a whole, and 59 for men (2005). In the more developed regions (Moscow and the autonomic districts of the Tyumen Region) life-expectancy is between four and six years higher than the national average, and continues to grow. This improvement has been brought about by higher incomes, better financing of the health system and, most importantly, by a change in the population’s way of life under the influence of the fierce competition in the labour market for highly-paid jobs.
At the same time, some areas in Russia have an extremely low life-expectancy, particularly among men, and these are areas of social deprivation. The most critical areas are the poorly developed Tyva Republic and the northern districts where peoples of small numbers live: life-expectancy for men in these areas is no more than 46-50 years, as the consequence of mass alcoholism. A low level of life-expectancy can also be observed in regions of Southern Siberia and many regions in the districts of the European North-West and Centre with a strong marginalization of population, particularly in rural areas. Here the problem of the lowering of the quality of the population is no less acute than the reduction in its numbers.
The maximum indicators of life-expectancy in the republics of the Northern Caucasus are the result of a better climate, lower proliferation of alcoholism, and purely statistical factors (unreliable records of infant mortality). On the whole, however, the south is winning in the quality of population, measured by longevity. And this is a considerable advantage, and one which has not yet been realized.
The growing regional polarization of population quality is particularly evident from a comparison of the limits of life-expectancy for 5% of the best regions and 5% of the worst (Diagram 2). For the regions with the lowest life-expectancy any future competition for human resources has already been lost.
Diagram 2. Limits of life-expectancy for 5% of the best regions and 5% of the worst
It is customary to consider that the root of the problems of population quality is low incomes, and that as incomes increase, so does the quality of the population. Such an interrelationship does exist in the long term, but one should not forget the role of the socio-cultural environment, which is extremely important for Russia, where many cities are poorly suited for full-value life. The growth of incomes without a modernization of the way of life can reduce the quality of the population. For example, the problem of AIDS and drug-dependence (the principal way it is spead) is most acute in wealthy cities and regions, especially those that have attracted human resources without a developed social environment (the Irkutsk, Samara and Sverdlovsk Regions, the Khanty-Mansiysk Autonomous District, etc.). This is the problem of the «lost» generation — young people from well-off families, but with no developed needs or motivations. In such families a high income is not directed towards the development of human capital. The rate of growth in the number of those infected with HIV/AIDS remains high, and the geographical range is extending, so the quality of youth population in the most problematical regions will decrease.
The above indicators of population quality provide a contradictory picture. Human resources can be evaluated with the aid of the Human Development Index (HDI) devised by the UN Development Programme. This is an integral indicator consisting of three components: income (gross regional product per head of population), longevity (life-expectancy at birth), and level of education, measured by adult literacy and the education of children and young people.
In 2005 Russia was placed 67th in the HDI ratings, but was included in the group of developed countries for the first time (an index of more than 0.800). However, the regional variations in the HDI are huge and continue to grow (Diagram 3). Moscow is comparable with the Czech Republic and Malta, the Tyumen Region with Hungary and Poland, and St. Petersburg and Tatarstan with Bulgaria, though our second capital is noticeably inferior to the Baltic States. Russia’s weakest regions (the Republics of Tyva and Ingushetia) are comparable in the ratings with Mongolia, Guatemala and Tadzhikistan.
Diagram 3. Human Development Index Russian regions 2002—2004 (See full size)
Êàðòèíêà
 |
|
Diagram 3. Human Development Index Russian regions 2002—2004 |
The HDI picture does not bear out the usual stereotype that there is Moscow and there is the rest of Russia. About 15% of the population lives in areas of the Russian Federation with an index rating corresponding to those of developed countries (over 0.800). Besides Moscow, these are the Tyumen Region (with its autonomous districts), St. Petersburg and Tatarstan. The leading areas remain virtually unchanged — they are the largest conurbations and leading regions in the export of resources. They are where human resources will mainly be concentrated, though this is less likely in the Tyumen Region, whose development is too strongly dependent on oil prices. As for Tatarstan, we can probably talk of better possibilities for retaining its own human resources, rather than of a concentration of immigrants from other regions.
Is it possible to say that the other regions will be giving up their human resources? For regions with a low HDI rating, where only 6% of the population lives, this is inevitable, and the speed of emigration will increase year by year. For the numerous regions in the median («middle») group with HDI indicators lower than the national average, which includes over two thirds of the country’s regions and population, the same prognosis is most likely, though the rate of emigration will depend on the viability of their regional centres, the possibility of attracting human resources from their own internal periphery and holding on to their own population.
The main question is whether regions with major macro-centres such as Yekaterinburg, Novosibirsk, Rostov-on-Don and Nizhny Novgorod, as well as other Volga and Ural regions with cities of a million or more inhabitants are able to attract high-quality human resources. Here the prognosis is rather negative, since the majority of these regions belong to the «middle» group and do not have the necessary advantages in the form of a higher standard of living and population quality that could provide the essential «difference of potential». Regions that are not included in the HDI top ten (the Samara Region and Bashkortostan) do not possess sufficiently powerful centres, though the potential of the Samara-Togliatti conurbation is higher.
The answer to the question in the title of this article has turned out to be banal: hypercentralization is continuing, and the whole country’s human resources will continue to be concentrated in the Moscow conurbation and in St. Petersburg. The situation can only be changed by a radical improvement in the standard and quality of life in other cities with high populations. For the moment, though, federal and regional authorities are occupied in battles with mayors and local governments. They simply don’t have the time.
1. Zh.A. Zayonchkovskaya. "Migration is the Fate of Russia" // Russian Expert Review. 2007. No. 1-2