Maternal Capital Leads to Births of 'Postponed' Babies
Federal and regional maternity benefits such as 'maternal capital', larger child allowances, and other measures introduced since 2007 to improve the country's demography have led to more births, but have not yet contributed to effective fertility rates in Russia. A paper bySergey Zakharov and Thomas Freyka in the HSE's new Demographic Review journal examines Russia's reproductive trends over the past half-century in an attempt to make projections concerning the future effects of the country's demographic policies.
Special Schools Better than Tutors at Preparing Students for USE
After the Russian Unified State Exam (USE) was introduced, additional exam preparation did not lose its popularity. While there was previously a preference for tutors from the university a student had selected, now students are finding instructors ‘off the street’ to prepare them for the USE, Ilya Prakhov, Research Fellow in HSE’s International Laboratory for Institutional Analysis of Economic Reforms (LIA), uncovered in his study, ‘The Dynamics of Investment and the Return on Additional Pre-entry Coaching’.
300 million tonnes
of concentrated agricultural and forest waste are produced by Russian industry each year. Refining and using this waste as energy would allow Russia to hold a respectable place in the emerging markets of biotechnology products and bioenergy.
90.3%
of Russians believe that fake alcohol products are widespread in Russia. About half of respondents believe that more fakes have appeared over the last 2-3 years.
The Brain Values Individuals' Own Information
When people have a choice, they can either rely on their own information or on that received from those around them. The more emotional an individual's relationship with their own data, the higher the likelihood that, when making a decision, they will be led by that rather than by other people's opinions. This also applies to investors' activity on the financial markets – as research by HSE Psychology Faculty Dean Vasily Klyucharev, and researchers from the University of Basel Rafael Huber and Jörg Rieskamp.
Nonresident Graduates More Likely to Move
One third of all graduates from regional colleges and universities plan to move elsewhere. Most would like to relocate to another Russian city, while some 7% of graduates are planning to leave the country, according to the study 'Migration Intentions of Graduates of Russia’s Regional Higher Educational Institutions' by Elena Varshavskaya, Professor at the HSE's Department of Human Resources Management, and Olga Choudinovskikh, Director of the Centre for Migration Policy.
1,7
is the number of births that a woman from the generation born in the latter half of the 1980s can expect in her lifetime. This number is significantly lower than the replacement rate for the population.
Childlessness Increasingly Determined by Attitudes
Generally in Russia, being childless is an involuntary situation associated with infertility, age, and being single. However, being childless in Moscow is often a deliberate decision. Aside from a biological inability to bear children, childlessness in Moscow is likely to be associated with higher levels of education, income security, the structure of the family of origin, and certain attitudes, i.e. that having children is not necessary for happiness, according to Svetlana Biryukova, Research Fellow of the HSE's Centre for Studies of Income and Living Standards.
65%
of upper-class students at Russian universities have experience combining employment and studies.
29%
of construction companies reduced their overall quantity of work in the third quarter of 2014 – the worst result of the last four years.