Modern Russian Society’s Social Health in the Dynamics of Demographic and Criminal Statistics

Abstract

The article is devoted to the analysis of social health trends reflected in the dynamics of individual causes and classes of causes of population morbidity and mortality, as well as in the dynamics of certain types of offenses. The work reviews the period of market transformations and includes data on Russia, federal districts and subjects of the Russian Federation. The study is based on information from Russian and foreign statistical sources (the Federal State Statistics Service, the database of the World Bank and the World Health Organization). The author looks at social health as an indicator of society’s adaptation to the changing social reality. We emphasize the fact that when analyzing social health it needs to be taken into account that subjective personality traits currently play a greater role than before, which is important when selecting empirical indicators. Despite the steady decline in the dynamics of most social health indicators over the previous years, Russia has still remained one of the world’s leaders when it comes to the spread of a number of social pathologies, including population mortality from homicides and suicides. At the same time the aforementioned problem continues to bear a high degree of latency: according to various estimates, the actual scale on which social illness manifests exceeds by many times whatever is indicated in the official statistical information. The paper concludes that, as the complex negative consequences of the “chaotic 90’s” wane, the problem of social health does not disappear, but instead manifests in different forms. It demands to be studied more closely at the level of public consciousness, social perception and behavior.