Improving Living Standards As the Key to Developing the Russian Arctic

The main problem of Russia’s Arctic regions is the outflow of population, despite high levels of wages, per capita income, and housing availability. To determine the actual standard of living, an approach has been proposed that evaluates the purchasing power of per capita income and housing availability, taking into account their quality. The indicators were compared with the average Russian values for 1990–2024 for the regions that are fully included in the Arctic zone of the Russian Federation: Murmansk Oblast and Nenets Autonomous Okrug (European Arctic), Yamalo-Nenets Autonomous Okrug (Siberian Arctic), Chukotka Autonomous Okrug (Far Eastern Arctic). The results of the comparative analysis in the favorable Soviet and problematic post-Soviet periods of the economy indicate a decrease in the excess of the purchasing power of the average per capita income of the population relative to the average Russian level in all the Arctic regions considered relative to 1990. Due to the extremely low pace of new construction, there is almost no modern high-comfort housing in the Arctic regions. The significant decline in the real standard of living of the population in the post-Soviet period has led to a loss of attractiveness for the Arctic regions. To restore this attractiveness, we propose using the existing Soviet-era excess of the purchasing power of per capita income relative to the national average: 1,3 times in the European Arctic, 2,3 times in the Siberian Arctic, and 2,9 times in the Far Eastern Arctic. The standards for modern and comfortable housing should be higher than the national average