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INFLUENCE OF DEMOGRAPHIC SITUATION ON STATE ECONOMIC POLICY

I. Maltseva, Y. Vertakova, V. Larionov

Abstract

One of the main goals of the state economic policy is to increase the level of the human wellbeing. Population is an important part of any economy, demographic policy is an important part of economic policy. Nevertheless, the directions of this policy differ significantly in all the countries depending on the prevailing conditions. In some countries, programs aimed at population growth are the priority, in others the policy is focused on population regulation. Over the past 50 years, the world’s population has increased 3-fold. If in 1950 the total number of people was 2.6 billion, at present it is more than 7.5 billion people. In this connection, the issues of the possible Earth overpopulation and developing programs for overcoming this challenge arise. For the first time, Thomas Robert Malthus wrote about overpopulation in his book “Essay on the Principle of Population” (1798). Subsequently, scientists involved in the study of demography disputed his conclusions and wrote about the absence of the threat of overpopulation. Thus, J. Simon believed that it is possible to provide a decent standard of living for the population of any size with the sufficient technology development; S. Kapitsa believed that, after fluctuations, the size of population stabilizes at a figure of 12-14 billion people. In addition to the above mentioned, there is one more circumstance that makes the issue of demographic policy more acute and links the economic and demographic policy into a single whole. In accordance with the pace of technological innovation, the labour requirements is gradually decreasing. After a certain period of time, there will be a situation when a part of the population will be unemployed. In this regard, there is a need either to develop new types of activities that would promote employment of the population or to form a social security system that will provide unemployed population with the necessary goods and services. The main objective of this work is to analyze demographic trends and to study their impact on the state economic policies in Russia, the G7 countries, China and India. To achieve this goal, economic and statistical methods, methods of comparative analysis as well as other methods and approaches applied in the works of foreign and Russian researchers were used. As a result of the research, the demographic trends of development were analyzed and their interrelation with the main macroeconomic indicators in different countries was assessed. The research of the relationship between scientific and technological advance, labour productivity and employment requirements exemplified by Russia contributed to the assessment of the amount of the unemployed able-bodied population and the construction of the situation development forecasts.

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