Older Russians rarely exercise to keep fit, but often continue working past retirement age.

Population ageing is likely to boost medicine, nanotechnology and robotics, but increase political risks.

At a time when industrially developed countries are facing migration pressure, Russia needs to take a fresh look at immigration to assess its geopolitical benefits and prevent inherent social risks; a smart migrant integration policy can provide a solution.

Russian small towns risk being depleted of young people, as three-quarters of school leavers are planning to migrate to regional centres, Moscow or St. Petersburg in search of a better life, while just 4% are prepared to stay in their home communities.

Maternal capital has helped increase birthrates in Russia, but its contribution to total fertility has been limited so far, with just 15 more children per 100 women of reproductive age, according to Fabian Slonimczyk and Anna Yurko, Associate Professors at the HSE International College of Economics and Finance. On the other hand, the proportion of women wishing to have more than one child has increased, and postponed births tend to occur sooner than planned, apparently influenced by the country's pro-fertility policies.

In Central Asia, subjective wellbeing and life satisfaction tend to be higher than objective wellbeing, and people in Tajikistan and Uzbekistan appear to be more content than Russians about their material circumstances and life in general. According to Tatiana Karabchuk, Deputy Head of the HSE Laboratory for Comparative Social Research (LCSR), and Daria Salnikova, Research Assistant of the same laboratory, relatively low levels of economic inequality in Central Asian countries may be one of the reasons for this paradox.

An elderly person can be described as aging successfully when they maintain good health and engage in fulfilling social activities. According to Larisa Kosova, Director of the HSE Joint Economic and Social Data Archive, poor health and a lack of savings often prevent older people in Russia from enjoying retirement.

Women who have moved to another part of the country tend to have higher fertility than those who stay in the same community all their lives. Relocation often improves a woman's life circumstances and broadens her choice of marriage partner, thus supporting her reproductive intentions, according to Svetlana Biryukova, Senior Research Fellow of the HSE Center for Studies of Income and Living Standards, and Alla Tyndik, Leading Research Fellow at the RANEPA.

The Russian family has been becoming more demographically heterogeneous over recent years. Some of the families follow the trend of having many children: women more often give birth to a third and fourth child, and the gap between births is decreasing, which makes the evolution of the family faster. At the same time, younger generations are inclined to postpone marriage and having their first child, which leads either to later motherhood or to childlessness. This means that two opposite trends are developing; along with the growing share of ‘Western-type’ families, with postponed parenthood and fewer children, there is a revival of the traditional family with more children, Sergey Zakharov, Deputy Director of the HSE Institute of Demography, reported.

Personal experience is a critical factor in the choice of destination for labour migration. Being familiar with the local language and laws and having local contacts matter more for potential migrants than the current economic situation in the target region, according to Evgenia Chernina, Junior Research Fellow at the HSE Centre for Labour Market Studies.

In the near future, the number of migrants from Central Asia coming to work in Russia will increase – particularly from Tajikistan and Kyrgyzstan, countries where remittances from their citizens working in Russia stand at almost half of their respective GDPs, according to a joint study by the Eurasian Development Bank (EDB), the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP), the HSE Laboratory for Comparative Social Research (LCSR), and the Russian Academy of Sciences (RAS).

Over the next 20 years, death rates among working age Russian men are expected to drop by a third due to a change in alcohol consumption preferences – namely, the decreasing popularity of vodka, according to Yevgeny Yakovlev, Assistant Professor at the HSE Department of Applied Economics, and Lorenz Kueng, Assistant Professor of Finance at the Kellogg School of Management at Northwestern University.