Mortality Trends in Russian Cities with The Population above One Million People (1989-2016)

Cities with the population of one million or more in contemporary Russia are considered by many to be the centers of social-economic (including demographic) modernization of the country. In this regard it is of particular interest to study the general mortality trends in them since the collapse of the Soviet Union till the present time (1989-2016), especially compared to the rest of Russia and to Moscow as an undisputed center of the country`s renewal. Our results confirm the hypothesis that millionaire cities in Russia enjoy higher life expectancies at birth than the rest of the country. Meanwhile, the comparison of mortality from the main causes of death reveal a significant heterogeneity of approaches to the coding of causes of death not only at the interregional level, but also at the city levels, which hampers the analysis of the changes with time in the mortality structure in given millionaire cities. In addition, some specific features of choosing the primary cause of death in Russian cities with the population of one million or more in comparison to the rest of the country are identified. Besides, we carry out the decomposition of differences in life expectancies at birth by age and causes of death between Moscow, other Russian cities with the population of one million or more, excluding Saint-Petersburg, and the rest of Russia (without North Caucasus Federal District) revealing the mechanisms of divergence and convergence of mortality between them in 1989-2016.