Alexey Nikolaevich, this is not your first measure of the level of happiness and well-being in Russian society. Compared to last year, do we have more or fewer successful people?
Alexey Zubets: Yes, the proportion of happy or successful people is one of the main metrics that characterize the quality of life of the population. This is all the more important since improving the quality of life is what the president called one of the key tasks of the country’s socioeconomic development. In world practice, this indicator is called “years of happy life”: it is assumed that the main goal of any person is to live a long and happy life. However, in Russian the concept of happiness does not entirely coincide, for example, with its English counterpart. In Russian, happiness means a higher level of emotional arousal. Therefore, to make our results comparable with international estimates, we use life satisfaction instead of happiness. The product of the share of people who are completely or mostly satisfied with life, as well as the average life expectancy in the regions of Russia, gives us an indicator that we call “years of successful life.” Using the same methodology, exactly the same indicator can be calculated for countries around the world.
And which countries are in the lead?
Alexey Zubets: The champions in terms of successful life expectancy are Iceland, Norway, the Netherlands, Switzerland and Finland. Unfortunately, international data is only available until 2022. However, if we rely on the Russian indicators that we obtained in 2023, Russia could well claim a place in the middle of the world ranking, in 45th place in terms of successful life expectancy. , between Hungary and Cyprus.
Among Russian regions, where do the most successful centenarians live?
Alexey Zubets: Among the Russian regions, the leaders are the Karachay-Cherkess Republic, the Nenets Autonomous Okrug, the Chechen Republic, the Altai Republic, Mordovia, the Chuvash Republic, North Ossetia, Tatarstan, Dagestan and the Republic of Mari El. And this, by the way, is the answer to the question of what prevents people from migrating to big cities. That is, the regions do not always have high incomes, but people do not travel from there and prefer to stay at home. The secret is a long and successful life, which people are not willing to sacrifice.
