The Use of Composite Quality of Life Indices for the Assessment of the Territorial Differentiation of Regions of the Russian Federation

Improving the quality of life of the population is a goal of Russia’s social policy. An effective tool of social policy can be a well-grounded assessment of territorial differentiation. The dynamics of the divergence in the quality of life between regions most accurately characterizes the change in regional differentiation. Observing the behavior of single indicators of territorial differentiation over long intervals does not allow for unambiguous conclusions regarding changes in the differentiation of the observed objects. A more informative assessment of the territorial inequality of regions can be obtained using composite indices that integrate many individual indicators. The task of determining objective quantitative indicators of territorial differentiation requires the use of formal methods for constructing a composite index that do not use subjective assessments and rely on state statistics data. Using the author's methodology, the composite indices of the quality of life for Russia’s constituent entities for 2010-2017 were calculated based on the method of principal components for a series of observations. The behavior of the characteristics of the calculated composite index allows us to conclude that territorial inequality in the quality of life between Russia’s regions during the observed period decreases (the coefficient of variation decreases) with an increase in the average values of the indicator in the country as a whole. However, the gap in the quality of life of the population in Russia’s constituent entities and Federal Districts remains significant and requires competent management decisions to overcome. Keywords—regional development, differentiation of regions, composite index, principal component analysis, quality of life of the population