This region is located in the interfluve of the Volga and the Don, where the Volga, Chernozem and Central regions meet, and therefore the population of the Penza region is very heterogeneous. The characteristics of its settlement show an intermediate position among the surrounding areas. Although it resembles Chernozemye in natural and climatic conditions, the population of the Penza region is more inclined to urbanization, and at this level it significantly exceeds the neighboring regions - the Tambov and Voronezh regions, and is inferior to the Saratov and Ulyanovsk regions. In total, 1 341 526 live in the Penza region people according to Rosstat (2017), of which 930,004 people in cities.
Characteristic
The urban population of the Penza region is less than the national average, but its number is gradually growing: in 1990, sixty-three percent of the population lived in cities, and in 2005 it was already sixty-six. This, of course, is not real evidence of urbanization, such trends are observed almost everywhere, since the countryside is constantly losing its population. Like most of the Russian regions, this region is monocentric. The urban population of the Penza region is half concentrated in the half-million capital. The cities Kuznetsk, which are quite average in size, are the industrial center and Zarechny is the scientific, formerly closed city of Rosatom (ZATO Penza-19). The remaining towns (eight of them) are tiny, more than half of them do not even have ten thousand inhabitants.
Therefore, we can say that the population of the cities of the Penza region (with the exception of the three main ones) leads a semi-rural lifestyle, since urban infrastructure is rather poorly developed everywhere. In addition, all cities, including Penza, have been losing their inhabitants for the last ten years. This is eloquently indicated by the census of the Penza region. Small cities depopulate most of all (up to twenty percent of the population is lost in a decade), because food industry and machine-building enterprises collapsed during Perestroika, as elsewhere. The regional center and Zarechny hold the young age structure more firmly, but here too the population is gradually decreasing.
Some statistics
The population density of the Penza region is quite close to the average in Russia (its European part), there are thirty-two people per square kilometer. Suburban areas are denser: in Penza two hundred sixty, in Kuznetsk - sixty-seven people per square kilometer. The southern areas are agricultural, and therefore have only twelve people per square kilometer. The population of the Penza region is growing slightly due to immigrants, but it is also decreasing a little faster, because people from the hinterland are leaving not only to Penza.
Rural settlement is characterized by large and medium-sized settlements that prevail in the Black Earth region. This slightly alleviates the problems of rural residents' access to basic social services. Nevertheless, about ten percent of the population of the Penza region in recent years has been lost. The depressive state of the regional economy and, as a result, problems with employment push people out of their native places. By the way, the migration outflow is even stronger among neighbors whose regions are just as economically peripheral and where people have the same low incomes - in Mordovia, in the Ulyanovsk and Tambov regions. The prospect is rather dull: the outflow of the population to other regions where wages are higher will only increase.
Problems
Most of all, the population of the Penza region in 2017 suffers from a lack of social services. Depopulation and aging of the population are much more significant here than in all other regions of the Volga region. This picture is especially depressing in the countryside. How many people in the Penza region will remain in five to ten years, if not take drastic measures to attract people to these fertile lands? The statistics are just scary.
Revenues here are very low. The strongest economic downturn shook the entire region, and the depressive state has not yet passed either in industry (especially in mechanical engineering) or in agriculture. The population has no social guarantees, since employment predominates in the informal sectors of the economy. The level of education of the population has fallen significantly; qualified medical care is practically inaccessible in rural areas.
Possible benefits
Gradually, in recent years, some social benefits have begun to appear. This is an increase in investment in regional structures of the economy, so the growth of incomes of the population promises to be higher. Naturally, very favorable climatic conditions work in plus: nature here is as if created in order to develop personal subsidiary plots, farming. This, of course, slightly softens the living conditions of the poor, given their scarcity of resources. In any case, the threat of hunger is much less acute. In addition, in this climate, socially caused diseases are not so common.
And the territories of the region themselves with their historical development as trade and craft centers since the seventeenth century have disposed to a measured, calm and long life. However, demographic indicators are not encouraging, since they designate the region as long-aging and depopulating. Fertility is one of the most problematic in the country, and the overall mortality rate is much higher than the all-Russian one. The natural decline in the population of the Penza region is one percent per year, which is twice as high as in the country. And in older villages, the mortality rate reaches a terrible figure - twenty-two percent! It is necessary to promote the influx of population to these places in every way, and in the last few years, this seems to have moved from a dead point.
Migration and consequences
In Penza, the population was slightly rejuvenated due to the migratory influx, but the natural decline is still high. Mortality is lower than in rural areas - only fourteen and a half percent, but fertility, apparently, is not encouraged in any way, it is much lower than that recorded in the country - less than eight percent. Why is this happening? Because this process began back in Soviet times, when young people left the countryside. The age structure of the region as a whole is similar to all neighboring regions with their high percentage of the elderly population.
During the twentieth century, a constant migration outflow from the Black Earth region took place. Then Perestroika came and the birth rate went through a huge decline: from 1985 to 2005, the proportion of children decreased by almost a third. It was 22.5%, and it became 14.6%, which brought the region closer to the worst indicators. Fewer children are only in the Nizhny Novgorod region. At the same time, the demographic load here is very high: six hundred twenty people are not able to work per thousand able-bodied population.
Life span
Migration outflows somewhat weakened during the crisis of the nineties, but the influx of migrants into the Penza region was small, despite the excellent natural and climatic conditions and the very low cost of living. When stressful migrations from the CIS countries ended, the Penza region again began to lose population - in the previous figures.
It would seem that in this climate, life expectancy should be high. Or at least close to the all-Russian - sixty-five and a half years. However, this figure, in contrast to national trends, is decreasing here. With longevity in the Penza region is not too safe. The life expectancy of rural men is particularly low — in 2005, it was fifty-six and a half years. The reason is a huge degree of marginalization of the village.
National composition
In the Black Earth region, Russians make up ninety-five or more percent of the population. However, the Volga region is much richer in this respect, since it is at the junction of three ethnic areas - Finno-Ugric, Turkic and Slavic. The ethnic composition is diverse and diverse. In the Penza region, more than eighty-six percent of Russians, the rest are mainly Tatars and Mordovians. And in the Shemysheysky, Sosnovoborsky and Neverkinsky districts, these nationalities outnumber the Russian population.
According to the 1989 census, Belarusians, Gypsies, Jews, Azerbaijanis, Ukrainians, Chuvashs, Armenians, Germans, Chechens, Uzbeks, Lezgins, Poles, Kazakhs, Avars, Tajiks, Maris, Udmurts, Turkmens, Kyrgyz, Lithuanians, Latvians lived in the region, Komi and Greeks - all nationalities in number from tenths to hundredths of a percent of the total population. In addition, they did not live there compactly, unlike Mordovians, Tatars and Chuvashs.
Economics, employment
In terms of economic activity, the population of the Penza region also does not show high results: here 66%, and in the country - 64% average employment. This is a consequence of the fact that the region has an older age structure and an increased share of the rural population, where employment is highest, and normal market relations in the agricultural sector did not form not only in 2005, they still leave much to be desired.
The number of people employed in the industrial sector over the decade to 2005 fell by more than a quarter. The manufacturing industry was losing its staff even more intensively, although production volumes were growing slightly. All this provoked the flow of employment into the services sector, but here the process went very slowly. The trade sector in these years has grown by seventy percent, but this figure is also unlikely to fully reflect reality: statistics cannot take into account entrepreneurship that is not registered. Depressed regions with huge reductions in industry and low wages for workers always grow with trade and other informal employment.
Population income
In 1999, more than seventy percent of the population of the Penza region was satisfied with incomes much lower than the established cost of living. That is why the region has become the most problematic of all the constituent entities of the Russian Federation. The strong economic downturn caused a high level of poverty, the purchasing power of residents' incomes was extremely low, and agriculture, where the largest part of the population worked, was always paid little.
In recent years, poverty has declined slightly. Nevertheless, statistics across the country show sixteen percent of those living below the poverty line, while in the Penza region this percentage is much higher and amounts to twenty-seven percent. Now the region’s indicators have become almost on a par with the rest of the Volga regions.
The medicine
Health indicators across the region cannot be unambiguously assessed. Life expectancy is still declining. The incidence and mortality from tuberculosis is lower than in Russia as a whole, but the number of deaths from cardiovascular diseases is much higher, which is also due to the aging of the population. Infant mortality in the nineties was lower than the all-Russian indicators, but already in the two thousandths the Penza region lost this advantage. There were years when not a single region of the country could compare with it.
The development and accessibility of medical services in the region is generally a byword. Here, the lowest provision with medical staff is thirty-seven doctors per ten thousand people, that is, sixty-eighth place in the regions of the country. Only in Penza, this figure is higher - sixty doctors per ten thousand people. In remote areas, there is definitely a severe shortage of medical care.
Education
The educational sphere also lags in many respects from neighboring regions. Only sixteen percent of the population over eighteen years of age have higher education. And the national average according to the 2002 census is nineteen percent. Among rural residents of the Penza region, only seven percent have higher education. The education sector in the region is weak, as neighboring university centers - Saratov and Samara - are pulling applicants.
There are five state universities in the Penza region, but the branch network is not sufficiently developed. The market for educational services does not develop, because the population has too low incomes. There are many students at universities, but the base is very low. There are significantly fewer vocational education institutions.