The New demography of Russia: challenges and opportunities

On September 25, the next annual scientific and practical conference of M-Holding "New Demography of Russia" was held: challenges and opportunities".  The purpose of the conference is to bring together researchers, practitioners, representatives of business, education and sciences, to understand the factors affecting the demographic situation and to understand how to build strategies for the development of society and business. The venue of the conference – the State Darwin Museum – was not chosen by chance: the focus of Romir's research is the person and the family.

The conference was opened by the president of the holding Andrey Milekhin. In his report, he drew attention to the fact that pessimism about the future is connected with the fact that initially demography – it is a science focused on the economic component of population growth and decline, while M-Holding offers to form a different approach, where the subject is the impact of the social environment and the possibility of purposeful management of the reproduction of human life.

The speaker outlined the main factors that affect demography, such as population growth, migration, urbanization, culture and local traditions. In conclusion of the report, Andrey Milekhin proposed some measures to overcome the demographic crisis: formulation of an attractive national idea, knowledge of common history, deurbanization, changes in administrative-territorial division, formation of state policy, definition of the cultural code of the nation, development of the Russian language.

Deputy Director for Scientific Work of the Higher School of Modern Social Sciences of the MSU Alexander Grebenyuk commented on Andrey Milekhin's speech as follows: "While we will think that the economy and economic demography — this is the basis around which everything is tied, we will be in decline. When we put a person in the center, this is what the colleagues from Romir are talking about, then a lot will change. We have forgotten about such a concept as "social behavior",and this is probably the most important thing right now. The contradiction between economic demographers and those who are about values, about children and family in the value system. And that's what you need to focus on. After all, values turn into social behavior and social attitudes: reproductive, immigration, consumer, and so on".

Reports were presented at the conference:

• "Psychodemography: as it will be" — Andrey Milekhin, Doctor of Sociological Sciences, Candidate of Psychological Sciences, Academician of the Russian Academy of Sciences, founder of M-Holding, President of Romir, Professor of Lomonosov Moscow State University and Evdokimov Moscow State Medical University.
• "Synergy of methods: A Consumer Scan Panel and normalization of surveys" — Ilya Kelpsh, Head of the Romir Client group.
• "Catering: from an idea to successful sales" — Margarita Abramkina, Director of Customer Relations, Romir, and Tatiana Talashmanova, Head of Marketing Research, Burger King.
• "The automotive market: Growth or Decline" — Lyudmila Fukova, Senior Director of Customer Relations, Romir, and Alexandra Kupriyanova, Head of Marketing Research, Avtovaz Customer Service.
• "Retail of Change: Customer Strategies" — Anastasia Sidorina, Director of Customer Relations, Romir, and Yulia Pliskanos, Head of the Category Management Group, LAB Industries (ex. Henkel).
• "Longitudinal System: Technologies and Solutions" — Inna Karaeva, Executive Director, Romir, and Viktor Maltsev, Research Director, Romir.

Consumer Scan Panel is a unique technological development of Romir, thanks to which the company collects and analyzes data on purchases of households and individual consumers. The panel sample represents the entire population of Russia living in cities numbering more than 10 thousand people.