Academician Aganbegyan: "Russia has the highest mortality rate among major powers..."

A week ago, the Russian Chamber of Commerce and Industry presented the Report "On the state of competitiveness of the Russian economy in 2020 and its impact on the development of domestic industry". The speaker of this event, the famous Soviet and Russian economist, academician of the Russian Academy of Sciences Abel Aganbegyan, in his interview presented the main provisions of this report, in which, among other things, the consequences of the coronacrisis pandemic for the Russian economy were analyzed.

It should be noted that 88-year-old Aganbegyan has seen many different kinds of crises in his life, and he has something to compare with the current one, which was superimposed on six years of economic stagnation in the country, which made its consequences especially difficult for the citizens of Russia. It is no secret that there are many more poor people in the country, unemployment has increased and depopulation has continued. And this despite the fact that the Russian authorities throughout almost the entire pandemic instilled in citizens an extremely dangerous populist myth that we passed the pandemic easier than others. Aganbegyan spoke about this in an interview with Novy Izvestia back in March this year.

In a new interview, the academician provides irrefutable evidence of the consequences of such a policy. It turns out that, per thousand people, among the major powers, Russia has the highest mortality rate. However, these are the most important theses that Abel Aganbegyan spoke.

The fall in real incomes of the population of Russia

Real incomes of the population during the years of stagnation have decreased by more than 10%. That is, the maximum real incomes of the population were in 2013, since then they have decreased by 13-14%. Final consumption of households decreased by 11%, retail turnover per capita and paid services also decreased by 9-10% during the pandemic, and during this time by about 13%. And in order to start social and economic growth, it is not enough for us to recover by 2019. Because the indicator for 2019 has a very low effective demand. And the effective demand depends on where you put what you have produced. After all, the consumption fund of the population, taking into account the purchase of housing, is 60% of the total gross domestic product. And this 60% decreased on average by 12-13%.

And these are the highest figures in the world, in no developed countries incomes fell by 10%. All countries have taken very serious measures to prevent falling incomes, they compensated people for both increasing unemployment and wage cuts due to unemployment, layoffs, etc. For example, in America, the average income in 2020 increased, not decreased. In Europe and elsewhere, the decline is very small. And in Russia, taking into account stagnation, incomes fell four times more than the gross domestic product.

On the increase in mortality of the population of Russia

But the worst indicator of a pandemic and the greatest damage to the economy from a pandemic is the increase in mortality. Every year, including 2019, our mortality rate decreased by an average of 30 thousand per year. In 2016, a total of 1,895,000 people died, and in 2019, 1,801,000 people. More than 90 thousand less. And in 2020, mortality increased, from May it began to grow, and from May to December increased by 341 thousand people. In the first quarter, it increased by 124 thousand people, and in 10 months, from May to March inclusive, 465 thousand people additionally died in our country, and about 500 thousand people will additionally die in a year.

On the cost of human life in Russia

Human life also costs money. Officially, there is no cost of living in Russia, it has not been established. But according to the law, if you die while traveling, this 2,000,000 rubles will be given to your family for your life. But you understand that a person's life is not worth 2,000,000 rubles, but at least 10 times more. The World Bank calculates the value of human capital in all countries, including Russia. If we estimate the World Bank's figures for the cost of human capital and multiply this by the number of deaths, some of whom died in their working age, then I would estimate the damage at six trillion, while the damage from a 3% decrease in gross product is slightly more than three trillion. ... That is, the damage from mortality is twice as high. But the loss is not only from mortality, many people have become disabled, many have suffered from the coronavirus, and will die prematurely because of this, their health has been undermined.

Therefore, this figure is needed one and a half times - and this is nine trillion. The death rate in America increased more, somewhere around 650 thousand people. But America has 2.5 times more population than ours. Therefore, per thousand people among the major powers, we have the highest mortality rate, with an increase the highest. Therefore, the statement that we are easier than other countries to bear the coronavirus, that our medicine was at a high level - this thesis is correct if you look only at the indicators of gross industrial product and mortality, the main cause of which is only coronavirus, it is considered by the operational headquarters. And the figures that I cite are the figures of the Federal State Statistics Service. These are not the figures of individual researchers, experts, these are official Russian statistics, more reliable than the figures of the headquarters.