Population movement in the Republic of Bashkortostan: a multi-factor analysis on panel data

Introduction. The study deals with natural movement of the population in the Republic of Bashkortostan at the regional and municipal levels.

The aim of the study is to assess the factors affecting the natural movement of the population of the Republic of Bashkortostan (RB).

Material and methods. The information base was the official statistical materials of the Territorial Body of the Federal State Statistics Service for the Republic of Bashkortostan: collections “Demographic Processes in the Republic of Bashkortostan”, “Socio-Economic Situation of Municipal Areas and Urban Districts of the Republic of Bashkortostan”; Rosstat data: collections “Regions of Russia. Socio-economic indices”. We considered data consisting of observations on rural municipalities in RB 54 municipal districts and 21 cities (urban communities and urban settleme;ts), tracked in dynamics for 16 years (2002–2017). At the first stage, municipalities were divided into five groups using cluster analysis based on natural growth indices. Then, to study the influence of medico-demographic, socio-infrastructural, socio-economic factors on the indices of the population’s natural movement, multivariate regression analysis was used. Due to the panel nature of the data, models with fixed individual and time effects were used.

Results. In the studied groups of municipalities, formed using cluster analysis, the significance of individual factors in terms of their influence on the performance indicator is significantly different, which necessitates taking this spatial heterogeneity into account when developing socio-economic policy measures. To confirm the existence of a relationship between the rate of natural population growth and per capita money income, the general rate of marriages, divorces, the proportion of women of fertile age, unemployment, and the ratio of the population over working age, we based the constructed regression models with fixed effects on panel data

Conclusion. Analysis of the results obtained and comparing them with the literature data allow us to determine the priorities of socio-economic, demographic policy at the regional level.