The use of econometric models in the study of demographic policy measures (based on the example of fertility stimulation in Russia)

Abstract

Russia is experiencing steady population decline. One of the reasons for this is low fertility. The other major problem is insufficient housing availability. In today's political discussion, these two problems are often presented as interconnected. The aim of our research is to analyse the relationship between fertility dynamics and provision of housing in Russia in order to subsequently assess the effectiveness of the most expensive measure for stimulating fertility in the state's history - the so-called "maternity capital". We estimated regression models for the time series of fertility rates and the availability of housing. To assess the strength of relationship between the time series, we analysed correlation between regressions' residuals in two models.A retrospective analysis of the time series showed no correlation between the two in a historical context. Throughout the time that the maternity capital was in place the correlation analysis also revealed no relationship between them. Our analysis showed that these variables were not significantly correlated either in urban or rural Russian areas. We can conclude that the introduction of maternity capital in Russia was not underpinned by profound statistical and demographic analysis. Our results also give reason to question the effectiveness of maternity capital. © ECMS Zita Zoltay Paprika, Péter Horák, Kata Váradi,Péter Tamás Zwierczyk, Ágnes Vidovics-Dancs, János Péter Rádics (Editors).