Current state policy concerning disabled persons should be based on principles stated in the Convention on the rights of persons with disabilities. It is impossible to properly analyze compliance with the Convention requirements without statistical monitoring of the situation of persons with disabilities, which allows for full and adequate description of the extent of disability, effectiveness evaluation of public policy measures aimed at ensuring the full and equal enjoyment of all human rights and fundamental freedoms. The authors present development directions for the system of indicators corresponding with evaluation of compliance with the specific rights of persons with disabilities with regard to the content of the Convention on the rights of persons with disabilities. The paper analyses forms of statistical reporting concerning disability issues and the system of statistical indicators that Rosstat has formed on their basis. It allowed the authors to identify the main indicators describing the situation of disabled people in Russia, and to estimate whether the current system of performance indicators sufficiently cover fundamental tasks aimed at achieving the requirements of the Convention. The paper focuses on the need for monitoring the situation of disabled persons in Russia that allows to assess the effectiveness of legislative initiatives and policy measures on persons with disabilities which were implemented in recent years. The article formulates proposals for closing the gaps in monitoring the information field, argues in favour of more extensive use of statistical reporting, censuses and sample surveys, and in some cases, updating and clarifying forms of statistical reporting.

This paper provides justification to proposals on constructing satellite accounts related to relationships between economic activities and environment. Before formulation the authors' proposals the article presents analysis of the several environmental and economic accounting projects such as the System of Environmental-Economic Accounting 2012-Central Framework (SEEA Central Framework), which is an international standard, and the so-called Dutch system - National Accounting Matrix including Environmental Accounts (NAMEA). The article substantiates possibilities for constructing separate tables for the Republic of Belarus using NAMEA approach, which is based on the idea that it is possible to measure the contribution of each economic activity to the environmental burdens on the natural environment. The authors commented further on their own calculations of the amount of water consumption and pollution - using the data on the final consumption of goods and services in the Republic of Belarus in 2013. The paper reviews the algorithm for calculating indirect water use and pollution of water bodies at the final use of products stage.

The article presents the results of the statistical analysis of the Russian higher education system. The following issues are considered: specialization and departmental affiliation of higher education institutions; size of student body in higher education institutions and its distribution by the field of education; contribution of different types of higher education institutions in teaching specialists by the fields of education; geographical location of higher education institutions and the accessibility of higher education in various regions, branches of universities and their geographical location. This study is based on the data of the monitoring of effectiveness of higher education institutions, conducted in 2015. The specific feature of this study is high representativeness of the sample - 94,7% of universities and 93,4% of universities’ branches. Characteristics of higher education institutions and branches along with information on their activities are structured and graphically tabulated. The content of the article might be of interest to researchers and analysts in the field of education, because it contains processed and aggregated quantitative data describing the higher education system as a whole and in certain regions. Extensive network of Russian higher education institutions covers 84 subjects (constituent entities) and 421 cities of the country. The majority of higher education institutions and enrolled students accounts for the European part of Russia. The main part of universities and universities’ branches is located in major cities and administrative centers. Many universities are interdisciplinary and train students in different areas of education. There are also specialized higher education intuitions - medical, art, agricultural, which are training the majority of students in the specialized fields. One-third of Russian universities have branches that are usually located in the same subject or the federal district (this is particularly the case in the Central Federal District).

After the collapse of the Soviet Union there was a significant increase in the foreign-born population in Russia due to outflow of the working-age population from the territory of former Soviet Republics. This group includes persons who live in Russia, but were born outside the territory of the country, i.e. in the Post-Soviet states. The aim of this study is to determine the share of foreign-born individuals in Russia and to outline their socio-demographic characteristics using The Russian Longitudinal Monitoring Survey - Higher School of Economics (RLMS-HSE) in 2009-2012. The authors conducted a comparative analysis of socio-demographic characteristics of foreign-born individuals in Russia and persons of foreign descent in other countries as well as native-born (local) population. Analysis results demonstrated that compared to other countries in Russia there are fewer foreign-born individuals, majority of whom are aged 15 to 64 and came from Ukraine, Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan. Socio-demographic characteristics of foreign-born individuals residing in the Russian Federation and representatives of the corresponding group living in other countries vary widely. The results of this research show that the foreign-born from the former republics of the Soviet Union as a group are younger and include more males than the native population. There are more married couples among them, but fewer families with children. They contain fewer persons with higher education, but more persons with completed high school and professional education than the natives.

The article analyzes main trends in world trade development, changes in its geographical and commodity (goods) structure that took place during the last 5 years. It also reviews international trade in services and how it is reflected in statistical data published by international organizations. The author explains main foreign trade ratios published in official statistical manual and shows howwell they correlate with recommendations of international statistical bodies. The paper also analyzes the problems of implementing international statistical standards (documents of international organizations) in countries’ national statistical practice.

The article focuses on ways to improve methodological approaches to the calculation of conversion factors for fish products, in accordance with the classifier HS Customs Union for the formation of officialstatistical information in terms of calculating the average per capita consumption of fish and fish products of the Russian Federation population. The error of the mean and statistical evaluation of the distribution of the values of the conversion factors were carried out taking into account the inter-annual changes in average values of differential factors, changes in the average values of the coefficient error for a range of products, followed by an error estimate for the average commodity group rates. Improving equipment and production technology have the greatest impact on the value of the raw material flow rates. The conducted study was used as a basis for determining the frequency of updating the conversion factors for commodity groups. The authors established that the determination of the consumption of fish and fish products by the population of the Russian Federation should be carried out with the use of differentiated coefficients, with regard to the mathematical weight (share) of the range of products produced.

Time series of the number of fires, fire deaths, direct property damage from fires occurred at the facilities of the economy in various fields of the economy of the Russian Federation in 2011-2015 were analyzed and presented for the first time. The authors estimated annual increase in the number of fires for the given period. The paper includes calculations of fire frequencies and fire deaths per employed population of the subject (constituent entity), as well as the amount of the direct property damage from fires per one million rubles of gross regional product for every subject of the Russian Federation. All subjects of Russia were broken up into three classification groups according to values of each of the abovementioned indicators.