Family is the principle institution in Russian as well as in Chinese society - on these premises the authors of the article conducted comparative socio-demographic analysis of the transformation that is happening to families in both Russia and China. The objective of this paper is to describe main directions of such changes in Russia and China and their place in the general context of the family transformation. Official Russian and Chinese statistics was used as a data source. For China, skewed sex ratio at birth is one of the most acute problems which in the paper is viewed from the standpoint of demographic policy of the 1980s. The authors draw a conclusion that in China there is a preponderance of men aged under 30 years, while in Russia women are overrepresented in the age group of 35 and older. Increasing prevalence of extra-marital unions and births in both countries is noted. In Russia, these phenomena are more clearly seen in the Far East and Siberia and are associated with a more active domestic migration in these regions. In China, premarital cohabitation is recorded in large cities, although to a much lesser extent than in Russia and in the Western countries; nevertheless, the spread of cohabitation is one of the main characteristic signs of the present time. Migration within China (first and foremost, from rural to urban areas) does not cause rupture in intergenerational and marital relations, while in Russia migration processes correlate with divorce trends and the prevalence of single-parent and other types of families. The authors outline common features and specific manifestations of ongoing family transformation in Russia and China (which generally speaking aligns with the Second Demographic Transition theory) and the role of continental peculiarities in demographic processes. Transformation patterns observed among the Chinese families make it possible to conclude that China belongs to the South-Asian family transformation model, while Russia - to the West-European model.

Development of information and communication technologies (ICT) is one of the strategic directions for modernization of economy; investments into the development of telecommunication infrastructure in the long term promote strengthening of strategic position of each country. In this regard carrying out the analysis of ICT use in the participating countries shall allow to estimate current state and development level of information society in the world, to reveal the existing development issues that undermine efficiency of the sector, to determine the level and condition of the business and regulatory environment, in particular, the existence of the healthy competition, innovative potential, necessary infrastructure, possibilities of financing of new projects. The author comments on the international ratings of countries by the index of ICT use and explains the necessity to study the dynamic behavior of selected indicators that form the index of ICT use. The article states that there is a persistent digital divide between developed and developing countries, it also argues that Russia has the potential in the nearest future to secure the tendency for improving its ranking within the global information society.

This article presents major improvement directions for agricultural and rural statistics in line with the primary document developed by international organizations - The Global Strategy to Improve Agricultural and Rural Statistics. The paper reviews its fundamental provisions; it also includes minimum set of core data comparable at international level, which should be provided by all countries -members of the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO). The author examines new aspects of statistical monitoring recommended for programmes of national agricultural censuses, which should be carried out in accordance with the World Programme for the Census of Agriculture of the 2020 census round. These censuses are extremely important since they are the key elements of the Global Strategy to Improve Agricultural and Rural Statistics. The article demonstrates the need for using international standards, concepts and definitions, and later on for coordinated use of results from agricultural census, other censuses and statistical surveys. Also, implementing new, revised versions of international classifications, adopted recently, should enable aggregated data to be compared across countries. The author emphasizes the need to develop new formats for presenting statistical data, carrying out survey of rural settlements as for their infrastructure and various services available to rural households. The paper presents different methodological approaches to carrying out the census in compliance with FAO requirements - it is recommended that all countries collect the essential items of agricultural census. The fundamental methodological recommendations for 2020 World agricultural census are relevant for improving the system of statistical monitoring of the development of agriculture and social and economic situation in rural settlements (villages) of the Russian Federation.

Recent years have seen a rapid emergence of new disruptive technologies, with digitalisation being a common characteristic. These include new platforms that facilitate Peer-to-Peer transactions, new activities such as crowd sourcing, a growing category of the ‘occasional self-employed’ and prevalence of ‘free’ media services, funded by advertising and ‘Big data’. Against a backdrop of slowing rates of measured productivity growth, this has raised questions about the conceptual basis of GDP and whether current compilation methods are adequate. This paper examines the statistical challenges posed by digitalisation. It delineates between conceptual and compilation issues and highlights areas where further investigations are merited. The overall conclusion is that, on balance, the accounting framework for GDP looks to be up to the challenges posed by digitalisation. Many practical measurement issues remain, however, in particular concerning price changes and where digitalisation meets internationalization.

The article presents a new method for transforming the low-frequency flow time-series into a consistent time-series with less step period according to given high-frequency indicator time-series. This method is founded on the framework of well-known movement preservation principle and the proportional first difference Denton method. The analytical solution for general problem of flow time-series temporal disaggregation is obtained in the form that demonstrates its linear dependency on an initial value of the instrumental disaggregation parameter. Some ways of incorporating the known Denton and Cholette initial condition to the analytical solution are considered. A notion of initial condition for preserving seasonal cycles in dynamics of multiplicative adjustments is proposed along with the certain way of its incorporation to analytical solution for general problem of flow time-series temporal disaggregation. The frontiers of idempotency and wide opportunities to formulate a recursive base for developed method are investigated. Special attention is paid to a sensitivity of the general problem’s analytical solution to small changes in high-frequency and given low-frequency data. Special techniques of applying the proposed method operationally are considered. The opportunities for two-stage implementation of the method are of great practical interest in the circumstances of the recent low-frequency data revisions and/or the new data arrivals. Computing efficiency of the developed tools for temporal disaggregation is quite high because associated calculations come to inversion of a square matrix of the order that equals a number of observations in low-frequency data set available. The paper contains a row of illustrative diagrams that represent the results of experimental calculations with the official statistical data on quarterly gross domestic product and monthly output index for main kinds of economic activities in 2011-2015.

The lack and inconsistency of information on the availability and movement of inventories is forcing national accountants to look for new approaches for their reliable calculation, in addition to the commonly used commodity flow method (balance sheet method), due to inaccuracies, due to the many incoming payments. To refine the results the author proposes to use mathematic models, in particular, macroeconometric models of vector autoregressive time series given in the form of a system of simultaneous econometric equations relying on several time series with the slowdowns, lags. Taking first differences of variables in these models is suitable to achieve stationarity for initially non-stationary time series and for estimation of increases, in particular, on changes in inventories. The latter is a component of gross domestic product reflected in the capital account of the nation and behaves very unstable, due to expectations of economic agents, market conditions and possible seasonal influence. Initial stationarity of inventories time series, given a sufficiently lengthy observations, makes possible the calculation of their levels, in particular, for the balance sheet of the nation. One of the key moments in the calculation of inventories is their deflation in comparable prices to highlight the «imaginary» part of their value due to price changes during the time spent in their inventory. The article proposes to impute duration (turnover) as the length of the vector autoregression lag, implying thus the cycle time of the use of inventories. The change in the value due to price changes is proposed to rewrite in a kind of moving average model expressed via the functions of «impulse response».

The problem of «excessive» territorial differentiation of social and economic development today is not only discussed by researchers in many countries, but also is becoming a significant area of management decisions. In particular, the implementation of specific measures to reduce territorial differentiation testifies to this. A new direction is formed in the regional policy of the European Union and it has been called «convergence policy». Measures to support the development of backward regions are also implemented in Russia. The authors hypothesized and brought arguments for the mixed impact of differentiation of municipal entities to the economic development level of the regions. It is assumed that high differentiation increases the risk of social upheaval, but low asymmetry of municipal entities, their uniformity create stagnant conditions in a whole region development. The authors present main results of evaluation of the correlation between the level of differentiation of the municipal entities and the level of development of the regional economy as a whole. Databases of municipal statistics of the Russian Federation and the European Union were used as input information for the calculations.