Population of the Penza region: number and density

This area is located in the interfluve of the Volga and the Don, where the Volga, Black Earth and Central regions meet, and therefore the population of the Penza region is very heterogeneous. The characteristics of his resettlement show an intermediate position among the surrounding areas. Although it is similar to the Chernozem region in terms of its natural and climatic conditions, the population of the Penza region tends to be more urbanized, and at this level far exceeds the neighboring regions - the Tambov and Voronezh regions, and Saratov and Ulyanovsk - inferior. Total in the Penza region is 1 341 526 People according to the Federal State Statistics Service (2017), including 930,004 people in cities.

Characteristic

The urban population of the Penza region is smaller than the average for the country, but its number is gradually increasing: in 1990, sixty-three percent of the population lived in cities, and in 2005 it was already sixty-six. This, of course, is not a real evidence of urbanization, such trends are observed almost everywhere, as the countryside is constantly losing its population. As well as most of the Russian regions, this area is monocentric. The urban population of the Penza region is half concentrated in a half-million-strong capital. Quite an average in the number of the city Kuznetsk - industrial center and Zarechny - scientific, in the formerly closed city of Rosatom (ZATO Penza-19). The remaining towns (eight of them) are tiny, more than half of them even do not have ten thousand inhabitants.

Therefore, it can be said that the population of the cities of the Penza region (with the exception of the three main cities) leads a semi-rural lifestyle, since the urban infrastructure is poorly developed everywhere. In addition, all the cities, including Penza, have lost their inhabitants for the last ten years. This is eloquently told by the population census of the Penza region. Most small cities are depopulated (up to twenty percent of the population is lost in a decade), because the restructuring of the food industry and engineering industries that formed their economic base collapsed. The regional center and Zarechny hold a younger age structure more tightly, but here the population is gradually decreasing.

Some statistics

The population density of the Penza region is quite close to the average for Russia (its European part), there are thirty-two people per square kilometer. Suburban areas are more densely populated: in Penza, two hundred and sixty, in Kuznetsk - sixty-seven people per square kilometer. The southern regions are agricultural, therefore they have only twelve people per square kilometer. The population of the Penza region slightly grows at the expense of immigrants, but also decreases a little faster, because people from the remote place leave not only for Penza.

Rural settlement is characterized by large and medium-sized settlements, which predominate in the Chernozem region. This slightly softens the problem of rural people 's access to basic social services. Nevertheless, about ten percent of the population in the regions of the Penza region has been lost in recent years. Depressive state of the regional economy and, as a consequence, problems with employment push people out of their native places. By the way, migration outflow is even stronger among neighbors, whose regions are also economically peripheral and where people have the same low incomes - in Mordovia, in Ulyanovsk and Tambov regions. The prospect is rather dull: the outflow of population to other regions, where wages are higher, will only increase.

Problems

Most of the population of the Penza region in 2017 suffers from a lack of social services. Here depopulation and aging of the population are much more significant than in all other regions of the Volga region. This picture is especially depressing in rural areas. How many people in the Penza region will remain in five to ten years, if not to take drastic measures to attract people to these fertile lands? The statistics are simply frightening.

The income here is very low. The strongest economic recession shocked the whole region, and the depressed state has not yet passed either in industry (especially in machine building) or in agriculture. There are no social guarantees for the population, since employment predominates in the informal sectors of the economy. The level of education of the population has significantly decreased, qualified medical care is practically inaccessible in rural areas.

Possible advantages

Gradually, in recent years, some social benefits are beginning to emerge. This is an increase in investments in the regional structures of the economy, so the population's incomes are expected to grow more. Naturally, they work in plus very favorable climatic conditions: nature here seems to be created in order to develop personal subsidiary plots, farming. This, of course, slightly softens the living conditions of the poor in case of a lack of resources. In any case, the threat of hunger is much less acute. In addition, in a given climate, socially conditioned diseases are not so common.

And the territories of the region with their historical development as trade and craft centers since the seventeenth century have a measured, calm and long life. However, demographic indicators are not encouraging, since they denote the region as being older and de-depopulating. Fertility here is one of the most problematic in the country, and the overall death rate is much higher than the all-Russian one. The natural decline in the population of the Penza region is one percent per year, which is twice as high as in the country. And in the old villages the death rate reaches a terrible figure - twenty-two percent! It is necessary to promote in every possible way the influx of people into these places, and in the last few years it has come to an end from a dead point, it seems, has shifted.

Migration and consequences

In Penza, the population was slightly rejuvenated due to the migration inflow, but the natural decline is still high. Mortality is lower than in rural areas - only fourteen and a half percent, but birth rate, apparently, is not encouraged in any way, it is much lower than that fixed in the country - less than eight percent. Why is this happening? Because this process began as early as Soviet times, when young people left the countryside. The age structure of the region as a whole is similar to all neighboring regions with their high percentage of the elderly population.

During the twentieth century, a constant migration outflow from the Chernozem region took place. Then came the Perestroika and the birth rate underwent a huge decline: from 1985 to 2005, the share of children fell by almost a third. It was 22.5%, and it was 14.6%, which brought the region closer to the worst indicators. Less children are only in the Nizhny Novgorod region. At the same time, the demographic burden here is very high: six hundred and twenty people are not capable of working for a thousand able-bodied population.

Lifespan

The migration outflow weakened somewhat during the crisis of the 1990s, but the inflow of migrants to the Penza region was small, despite the excellent natural and climatic conditions and very little cost of living. When stressful migrations from the CIS countries ended, the Penza region again began to lose population - in the same indicators.

It would seem that in this climate the life expectancy should be high. Or at least close to the all-Russian one - sixty-five and a half years. However, this figure, unlike the trends in the country, is falling here. With longevity in the Penza region is not too happy. The life expectancy of rural men is especially low - in 2005 it was fifty-six and a half years. The reason is a huge degree of marginalization of the village.

National composition

In the Black Earth region, Russians make up ninety-five and more percent of the population. However, the Volga region in this respect is much richer, because it is located at the junction of three ethnic areas - Finno-Ugric, Turkic and Slavic. Ethnic composition is diverse and multifaceted. In the Penza region, more than eighty-six percent of Russians, the rest are mostly Tatars and Mordvins. And in the Shemysheysky, Sosnovoborsky and Neverkinsky districts these nationalities outnumber the Russian population.

According to the 1989 census, Belarusians, Roma, Jews, Azerbaijanis, Ukrainians, Chuvashs, Armenians, Germans, Chechens, Uzbeks, Lezgins, Poles, Kazakhs, Avars, Tajiks, Mari, Udmurts, Turkmens, Kirghiz, Lithuanians, Latvians, Komi and the Greeks - all nationalities in numbers from tenths to one-hundredths of a percent of the total population. In addition, they lived there is not compact, unlike the Mordvins, Tatars and Chuvashes.

Economy, employment of the population

By the level of economic activity, the population of the Penza region also does not show good results: 66% here, and 64% average employment in the country. This is a consequence of the fact that in the region the older age structure and the higher share of the rural population, where employment is the highest, and normal market relations in the agricultural sector have not been formed not only in 2005, they still leave much to be desired.

The number of people employed in the industrial sector declined by more than a quarter in the decade to 2005. The manufacturing industry was even more intensively losing its personnel, although the volume of production was growing slightly. All this provoked an overflow of employment in the services sector, but here too the process went very slowly. Trade in these years grew by seventy percent, but this figure hardly reflects reality: statistics can not take into account an enterprise that is not registered. Depressive regions with a huge reduction in industry and low earnings of workers always grow in trade and other informal employment.

Incomes of the population

In 1999, more than seventy percent of the population of the Penza region was satisfied with incomes much lower than the established subsistence level. That is why the region became the most problematic of all subjects of the Russian Federation. The strong economic downturn led to a high level of poverty, the purchasing power of the residents' incomes was extremely low, and the agriculture, where the most significant part of the population worked, is always paid little.

In recent years, the level of poverty has decreased slightly. Nevertheless, statistics show that sixteen per cent of those living below the poverty line are in the country, while in the Penza region this percentage is much higher and amounts to twenty-seven per cent. Now the region's indicators have become almost level with the other regions of the Volga region.

Medicine

Indicators of health in the region can not be unambiguously assessed. Life expectancy is still decreasing. The incidence of tuberculosis and mortality from it is smaller than in Russia as a whole, but the number of deaths from cardiovascular diseases is much higher, which is also caused by the aging of the population. Infant mortality in the nineties was lower than all-Russian indicators, but already in the two-thousandth and this advantage the Penza region lost. There were years when in this with it could not be compared to any region of the country.

The development and accessibility of medical services in the region is generally a parable in the country. Here, the lowest security of medical personnel is thirty-seven doctors per ten thousand people, that is, the 68th place in the regions of the country. Only in Penza this indicator is higher - sixty doctors for ten thousand people. In remote areas, there is definitely a severe shortage of medical care.

Education

The educational sphere also lags behind the neighboring regions in many ways. Only sixteen percent of the population over the age of eighteen have higher education. And the average for the country according to the 2002 census is nineteen percent. Among rural residents of the Penza region, only seven percent have a higher education. The sphere of education in the region is weak, because the neighboring university centers - Saratov and Samara - are being pulled over by entrants.

There are five state universities in the Penza region, but the branch network is underdeveloped. The market of educational services does not develop, because the population has too low incomes. There are many students in universities, but the base is very low. There are significantly fewer vocational training institutions.