Russians began to live longer in 2018, as life expectancy increased by 0.2 years, Russia’s state statistics service, Rosstat, reported. The increase is due to a reduction in women’s mortality, while men’s rate remained high.
In 2018, life expectancy for Russian women at birth was 77.87 years, for men, 67.66 years. Whereas the gap has narrowed in previous years – from 2005 to 2017, the difference shrank from 13.55 to 10.1 years – last year, it slightly broadened again – by 0.1 years. The figures are also influenced by geographical differentiation: in the Magadan and Bryansk regions and Udmurtia, the difference between the life expectancy of women and men is 12 years, while in Dagestan, Ingushetia and Chechnya it is about 5 years.
The nationwide average of 10.21 years is the biggest in Europe. According to the Monitoring of Russia’s Economic Outlook report compiled by RANEPA and the Gaidar Institute, despite some positive changes, the mortality of Russian men remains very high, which, among other things, creates a whole range of socio-economic problems and casts doubt on the possibility of raising life expectancy to 78 years by 2024, as required by the President’s May Executive Order.