This article is a journal version of a brief description of the study of the problems of the formation and implementation in practice of a system of indicators of agroecological statistics, initiated and organized by the Interstate Statistical Committee of the Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS Statcommittee) in 2019. The study analyzed and used many international as well as national methodological, organizational and technical materials. The authors considered a set of specific indicators, the data on which have been collected, compiled and published for several years in the Eurostat system and under the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), endorsed by the UN General Assembly in 2015. In this regard, the authors of the article proposed and thoroughly substantiated their interpretation of the field of agroecology (and the corresponding system of indicators) as agricultural activity and the use of rural areas, carried out in the closest connection with the complex requirements of environmental protection, including rationalization of nature management, within the agricultural sector itself and on rural territories, taking into account some related («border») aspects.

Based on this approach, based on the foreign documentation and domestic developments, an Integrated Table of Agroecological Indicators was formed, containing 18 sections and including a total of 255 indicators (with organizational and methodological explanations for these indicators). Moreover, the article provides a brief description of each section. In addition, the issues of linking the proposed Integrated Table with the UN Sustainable Development Goals Indicators (SDGs) were considered separately and in sufficient detail.

In parallel with the above-described aspects, some problems were revealed that needed to be solved before the practical implementation of agroecological statistics in the CIS countries in general and in the Russian Federation in particular. This applies, for example, to issues such as clarification and updating of classifiers reflecting environmental protection and nature conservation activities concerning agricultural production and rural territories; the correct statistical reflection of the output of organic products in agriculture, as well as the cultivation of crop materials for processing on biofuels (based on the tenets of agroecology)ю

The article covers issues of so-called ecosystem accounting in the framework of the system of national accounts and the auxiliary System of Environmental-Economic Accounting. Specific aspects of these problems were described in detail and some suggestions were made to address them.

In this publication, the authors establish validity of the proposals on the methodology for analyzing the quality and factors of the economic development of the Russian Federation, not for the country in general (as it was done in the first part of the article, published in Voprosy Statistiki, No. 2 for 2020), but at the regional level. The main focus is to study the factors determining the quality of human capital as well as their specifics for several Russian regions. All the proposed methodological techniques of analysis are implemented on the example of the education sector that is fundamental for improving the quality of human capital during the emergence of a new technological paradigm, with account to raising and nurturing the creative generation of young people who will shape the new order. It is noted that amidst the development of modern technologies responsible for the transfer of data and knowledge, as well as standardization and regulation of the processes of providing services, it is necessary to maintain the content of education services, their focus on the shaping of a creative personality and transferring creative work skills. Only this shall ensure the country’s participation and its benefits in the creation of a new technological structure.

The article examines factors that touch upon differentiation of regions by the level and quality of education, such as the state of the material and technical base, personnel availability and qualifications, terms for the provision of services, and others. The authors delve into the influence of region resource provision factors, remoteness from labour force centers of gravity, and emerging research centers, as well as national particularities and historical background of the regions. The data on the «personnel migration» of young people of educational and post-educational age are presented. Relevant conclusions are made about some depletion of this resource in several remote regions due to the attractive policies of strong regions.

The authors argue that the regional efforts and the redistribution of funds through the federal budget, as well as business efforts, are not enough to reduce the regional differentiation in education quality. This requires tailored solutions allowing to use the potential of young people from remote regions and regions not affected by scientific centralization, as an important human development factor. The paper considers directions for solving this problem.

The objective of this study is to assess the contribution of changes in the age and educational structure of the population and labor force to the dynamics of the levels of employment and unemployment in Russia in the last two decades. The empirical basis of the study is the microdata of the Labor Force Survey conducted by Rosstat monthly. Standardization and decomposition of statistical indicators are used as methods of analysis.

The author cites evidence that during the period under review the composition of the population and labor force has undergone significant structural changes. The proportion of people with higher education, which are characterized by higher employment rates and lower unemployment rates has steadily increased. The share of young people and the poorly educated population, which are characterized by low participation in employment and high risks of unemployment, was declining.

The dynamics of employment and unemployment rates in 2000-2018 were largely determined by the influence of structural factors favorable (in terms of the impact on the labor market) shifts in the age and educational structure of the Russian population and labor force.

Structural factors had a greater impact on the positive dynamics of employment. Over the period in question, the growth in the level of education contributed to more than half of the increase in the employment rate. Changes in the age structure put downward pressure on the level of employment, but the contribution of this factor was insignificant. Structural factors contributed about a third of the overall decline in the unemployment rate. The contribution of changes in age and educational structure was almost the same in magnitude.

The estimates provide a more accurate idea of the real situation on the Russian labor market and the reasons underlying the dynamics of its indicators. Quantitative characteristics, reflecting changes in the age and educational structure of the population, allow, according to the author, to improve the quality of the developed functional labor market forecasts.

The article summarizes research results of the study on the problem of assessing the differentiation level of socio-economic development of territorial units of the Russian Federation. The authors propose an approach to measuring differentiation using mixtures of probability distributions.

This technique was developed and tested on real data that allows one to determine the presence or absence of interregional differentiation. The research hypothesis, that interterritorial differentiation is estimated by a specific statistical indicator selected based on a content, qualitative analysis, served as a theoretical platform of this methodology. Differentiation is practically absent if the entire statistical population is described by a single law of probability distribution. If the statistical population is described by a mixture of probability distributions, then one should expect the presence of a significant level of differentiation by the considered indicator.

In mathematical statistics, the problem of separating a mixture of probability distributions (estimating parameters of distribution densities and weighting coefficients) is traditionally solved using several similar methods. For example, the expectation-maximization (EM) algorithm, median modifications of the EM-algorithm, SEM-algorithm, taking into account the specifics of the selected object (constituent entities of the Russian Federation a small sample). To solve this problem, the authors used the SEM algorithm. As the information base of the empirical study, official statistics were used (open data from the Federal State Statistics Service).

The typologies of the constituent entities of the Russian Federation were identified based on two characteristics within 2005-2017-time interval. The first one being the level of violence (using the “homicide rate” indicator the number of homicides and attempted murders per 100000 population). And second average per capita income, which made it possible, among other things, to additionally test the hypothesis of the traditional use of differentiation trends in the level of violence as an indicator of economic inequality. According to the authors, the results of this study can be used as instrumental and informational support for managerial decisions aimed at regulating the differentiation of Russian regions by the level of violence and economic inequality.

The article develops methods for constructing economic (analytical) indexes in the framework of the holistic theory of market demand, built in recent years. By this, the economic indexes presented in the world literature within the framework of the theory of individual demand and, accordingly, related to households, acquire practical value.

The introduction provides a brief overview of the main problems of modern indexology and the implementation of an economic approach dating back to the classical work of 1924 by the Soviet statistician A.A. Konüs. The properties of the most well-known «formula» indexes of Laspeyres, Paasche, and Fischer with respect to the fulfillment of the Fisher test criteria are described. These indexes play an important role in the methods proposed by the authors for constructing analytical indexes, which are determined through the function of consumer expenditures. The latter is determined by a utility function that rationalizes trade statistics. The rationalizing utility function is constructed ambiguously, and the corresponding task should be specified. Methods for its solution are proposed, developed within a non-parametric demand analysis of Afriat-Varian. The core of this analysis is the system of linear Afriat’s inequalities that determine the values of the utility function and marginal utility corresponding to statistical demand. This system can be inconsistent and unstable with respect to variations of non-exact demand statistics. In the case of compatibility, inequalities have many solutions, and the choice of different solutions of inequalities gives different values of analytical indexes. The authors suggest three types of tasks for the stable solution of Afriat’s inequalities, which define indexes with characteristics of optimism (low price indexes and high quantity indexes), pessimism (vice versa) and objectivity.

Therefore, the problem of increasing the objectivity of consumer demand indexes receives a theoretically justified toolbox methods for calculating analytical market demand indexes that take into account, in contrast to formula indices, consumer preferences.

This article covers selected results of economic and statistical analysis of the dynamics of teaching staff’s remuneration in 12 regions of the Russian Federation, the territory of which completely belongs to the Far North and equated areas as of 01.01.2019. The growth tendencies in remuneration of teaching staff at two levels of the educational system preschool and general education (including as compared to Russia as a whole) were revealed, as well as problems encountered in 2013-2018 in connection with the implementation of Presidential Executive Order No. 597 of May 7, 2012 «On Measures to Implement the State Social Policy».

The authors argue the need for widespread use of the average annual absolute value of one percent growth, which allows to correctly validate the final rating of the country’s regions by average wages level. The indicator «advance coefficient» is proposed, which allows to highlight the main factors of fulfillment or nonfulfillment of the 2012 May Decree of the President of the Russian Federation in certain regions of the country. The article states that the achievement of the salary targets for each year of the period under review is determined by a combination of two factors: the level of implementation of the target indicator in the base year and the advance coefficient, which is the ratio between the growth rate of teachers’ salaries and the growth rate of the Presidential Decree of 2012’s target indicator. According to the authors, improved methods of economic and statistical analysis shall improve forecast estimates accuracy, which in turn is necessary to outline concrete steps to implement social tasks of national importance concerning each of the regions under consideration.

The article looks at how Soviet, Russian state statistics operated during the Great Patriotic War (1941-1945). Statistical activities within both the system of state structures, led by the Central Statistical Board of the USSR State Planning Committee, and departmental statistics, organized at that time in sectoral management structures – Narkomats (People’s Commissariats). The authors show how urgent mobilization of all the nation’s resources for needs of the front led to the changes in statistical work; this was primarily related to priorities of statistical observations and time frames of statistical works.

The paper analyses main directions of statistical activity on the collection and processing of information on different levels of the managerial structure and at the industry level. The authors review all advances in statistics that happened in wartime conditions urgent censuses (surveys) and operational data transfer, a system of operational accounting.

In a separate section of the article using archival sources, for the first time, are considered the problems of organizing statistical activities in Leningrad, the city that found itself in the blockade ring in 1941, and ways to solve them in extreme military conditions.