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Research Programs / Projects

Parents and Children, Men and Women in the Family and the Society. A pilot project within the Pan-European Generations and Gender Program/Survey

General Coordinator: Cand.Sc. T. Maleva; Academic Supervisor: Cand.Sc. S. Zakharov; Executive Manager: Cand.Sc. O. Sinyavskaya

Duration: October-December 2002

Support: Max-Planck Institute for Demographic Research (Rostock, Germany) - The Max-Planck-Gesellschaft zur Forderung der Wissenschaften e. V. within an R&D contract

Project Participants: Cand.Sc. V. Magun, Cand. Sc. L. Ovcharova, D. Popova, Cand.Sc. L. Prokofieva

Partners: Max-Planck Institute for Demographic Research, Center for Demography and Human Ecology of the Institute of National Economy Forecasting RAS, Institute of Sociology RAS, VCIOM

Objectives and tasks:

Fertility and mortality change radically transformed the age structure of industrial countries. The most significant social and economic consequence of such a change in the demographic balance between generations is the principal redistribution of national income for benefit of the elderly population. To explore the problem in more detail, the international Generations and Gender Program was launched in 2001, initiated and coordinated by the Population Activities Unit of United Nations Economic Commission for Europe. The program is aimed at a cross-national, comparative, multi-disciplinary, longitudinal study of the development of the family, family relations, as well as social and economic conditions of the households in modern industrial countries of Europe and North America. More than twenty countries, including Japan, have already joined the program or expressed the inclination to do so. Russia is also a participant of the program

The first stage of the program consists in a large-scale sociological survey, unified for all the countries, that would involve 8 thousand respondents (4 thousand men and 4 thousand women) in each country. The research allows to analyze the following problems:

• the role of economic and social processes for the demographic behavior of the population; the opposite effect: the influence of changes in the family (the household) on economic, labor, and other activity of its members;
• the forms of family relations and fertility (separation from the parents' family, getting married, partnership, divorce, giving birth to children out of wedlock), family behavior in case of family break-up (second marriages; economic assistance and bringing up children);
• the influence of social and economic factors on fertility;
• women's reproductive health;
• social causes of child mortality;
• gender equality: redistribution of roles in the family, in the economic and labor sphere (that of employment, income, etc.)
• poli-nuclear families and interaction of generations in the family; intra-family and inter-family, monetary and non-monetary transfers between generations;
• pension and pre-pension age behavior: retiring age (actual or planned), strategies in choosing sources of living, continuing / giving up work after having reached the pension age and been granted a pension;
• the urban family and the rural family (partnership, household), regional differences.

Main results:

In October 2001, the Russian National Council for the international program (the Russian title of which is Men and Women, Parents and Children in the Family and the Society) was established in Moscow and included the following members:

• Independent Institute for Social Policy;
• Center for Demography and Human Economy of the Institute of Economic Forecasting, RAS;
• Institute of Sociology, RAS.

The IISP is the directing agency in the Council. The State Committee for Statistics of the Russian Federation acts as observer for the Russian National Council and takes part in international meetings within the Program.

The International Consortium chose Russia as the pilot country to test the research methodology and instruments (Great Britain was the second country to conduct the pilot project). In November-December 2002, the IISP, together with the Coordination Council and a network of professional interviewers from the VCIOM, conducted a pilot survey which involved 150 respondents in four Russian regions (Moscow, Nizhni Novgorod, Vladimir, and Voronezh regions). The pilot survey proved the principal possibility to conduct the full-scale research in Russia, and allowed to correct the methodological instruments. Most of the corrections from Russian experts were taken into account, and the expert activity itself was highly evaluated for the efficiency and professionalism. The adjusted version of the standard questionnaire (unified for all the countries) was presented to a wide audience of specialists and practitioners from all the GGP countries at the meeting of the Informal working group on February 24-26, 2003, in Prague. T. Maleva (IISP), S. Zakharov (Center for Demography and Human Ecology), and S. Nikitina (State Committee for Statistics of the Russian Federation) represented the Russian National Council.

The Russian National Council planes to conduct the first wave of the core survey in the first half of 2004. Now the GGS Russian National Council is searching for funds to conduct the full-scale sample survey in Russia.