The number of centenarians in Russia has fallen sharply after taking into account census data

Due to the recalculation of data as part of the census, the number of Russians aged 90 years and older at the end of 2021 turned out to be 180 thousand less than expected. At the end of 2022, about 600 thousand people lived in RUSSIA.

Clarification of demographic statistics taking into account the All-Russian Population Census (conducted in the fall of 2021) has led to a sharp reduction in the official number of centenarians in Russia. This follows from the Rosstat data provided by RBC's statistical service.

At the end of 2020, there were 159.7 thousand or 20% fewer people aged 90 years and older compared to previously posted data for this period: 628.7 thousand instead of 788.5 thousand people. In 2021, the changes turned out to be even greater: the number of citizens over 90 years old decreased by 179.2 thousand, or 23% compared to previous data, to 586.5 thousand instead of 765.7 thousand people.

The census count also worsened the temporal dynamics of the total number of centenarians in 2021 compared to 2020. If the early data, excluding the census, showed their reduction over this period by 22.7 thousand people (for the first time in the last ten years), then the data, taking into account the census, showed a decrease by 42.3 thousand people. However, at the end of 2022, the number of people over 90 years old increased by 11.8 thousand people and reached 598.3 thousand, follows from the preliminary data of Rosstat. This is 0.4% of the total population of Russia as of January 1, 2023.

Rosstat is assessing the age and sex composition of the population as of January 1 of the reporting year from the results of the last population census, taking into account births, deaths, arrivals, and departures for the periods after the census, the statistical service explained to RBC. Currently, work is underway to prepare the publication of recalculated data retrospectively for the past ten years based on the results of the 2020 census. The final data on the age composition of the population as of January 1, 2023 can be submitted no earlier than the second decade of June this year, the ministry noted.

The decrease in the number of citizens aged 90 years and over as a result of taking into account the results of the census is superimposed on the general trend, according to which the census increased the number of permanent population of Russia by 1.4 million people as of the beginning of 2022.

"Either died or left"

In fact, the census found that a significant part of the elderly Russians who existed in the current population record had already died in reality or left the country, a researcher at the Institute for Economic Policy named after V.I. E.T. Gaidar Igor Efremov. “Such errors always accumulate between population censuses. If a person was mistakenly rewritten by the previous census twice (for example, at the place of registration and at the place of actual residence), and then died, then the remaining non-existent “copy” of the deceased person will continue to be listed in the statistics,” he said.

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The marked decline in the number of Russians aged 90 and over in 2021 is most likely due to the covid-19 pandemic , during which excess mortality was highest among the oldest, Yefremov believes. However, in the period after 2022, the number of centenarians in Russia will continue to grow due to the fact that in each next generation an increasing proportion of them live to a ripe old age, the expert predicts.

“This is due to the improvement in the HEALTH of the elderly relative to the elderly from previous generations, which is associated both with a change in the lifestyle of these people during their adulthood (less hard physical labor, better nutrition), and with the development of medicine, ” explains Efremov. As RBC previously wrote, life expectancy in Russia in 2022 increased by 2.7 years, to 72.8 years. According to the forecast of presidential aide Maxim Oreshkin, in 2023 the indicator should update the maximum and exceed the pre-pandemic level (73.34 years).

The Caucasus is not a leader in centenarians

In recent years, the process of demographic aging of the population has intensified in Russia, researchers from Novosibirsk Nadezhda Goroshko and Sergey Patsala state in the article “Long-livers in the demographic structure of the population of Russia”, published in the journal Social and Labor Research (fresh issue for the first quarter of 2023). However, unlike in developed countries, where among the main factors of aging are an increase in average life expectancy and a decrease in mortality in older age groups of the population, that is, the so-called aging from above, in Russia such a factor is a reduction in the birth rate, that is, “aging from below,” they point out. .

In addition, longevity in Russia has obvious gender disproportions, scientists have noticed . “The proportion of women in the age group of 90 years and over is 75.3%, and men - 24.7%. By the age of super-centenarians (100 years or more), the gender gap is reduced to a ratio of 66.4 and 33.6%, ”the article says. The main reasons for this disproportion are that men more often die at an earlier age. This is due to their "low resistance to socio-economic shocks, indifferent attitude to their own health, greater prevalence of asocial phenomena among men", etc.

Geographically, in terms of the absolute number of centenarians, their share in the total population and in terms of the longevity index, the Central Federal District is the leader among the macroregions of Russia, the researchers estimated. “In the regions of the North Caucasus and Siberia, which in Russia have traditionally been considered “centers” of longevity, on the contrary, longevity indicators are noticeably lower, which is especially noticeable in such subjects as the Chechen Republic, the Kabardino-Balkarian Republic, the republics of Tyva and Sakha (Yakutia)”, - follows from the article. The “phenomenon” of Caucasian or Siberian longevity, which is common in popular culture, can be associated both with the presence of isolated but striking cases of longevity in these territories, while the official relatively low figures may reflect a statistical underestimation of centenarians, who live in remote rural areas. The Far Eastern Federal District is an outsider in all these parameters, the article states.