Socio-economic Determinants of Alcohol Consumption in Russia: Analysis for Urban and Rural Populations

Currently, one of the main tasks of the state is development of measures to improve the health of the population. According to according to WHO, 50% of health is determined by lifestyle, including lack of bad habits (alcohol consumption, smoking, consumption drugs) (WHO, 2018). Excessive alcohol consumption results in only to the deterioration of human health and the occurrence of diseases, but also creating negative effects for the state in the form of loss of human capital, additional health care costs (WHO, 2020). According to the WHO Global Report Alcohol Consumption and Sustainable development ”excessive alcohol consumption becomes one of the main obstacles to achieving the Sustainable Development Goals because alcohol consumption is closely related to more than 200 diseases and injuries, 40 of which are one hundred percent dependent on each other. Moreover, in the WHO European Area, which includes Russia, 10% of all deaths are attributable to alcohol consumption, and this region has been the zone with the highest consumption for many years (WHO, 2020). In Russia, 25% of the population lives in rural areas, of which 71% are people over 24 years old (Rosstat, 2020). It is generally accepted that in rural areas of Russia a large proportion of the population is excessively drinking people. However, if we turn to the data of the RLMS of the National Research University Higher School of Economics, the average consumption of women in the village was 200 grams of pure alcohol per month, and for women in the city it was 8 grams less, while the difference between men was more than 31 grams, but also not so significant. Moreover, a greater proportion of men and women living in the city have ever consumed alcohol than people living in the countryside (40% of men in rural areas and 59% in cities, 26% of women in rural areas and 39% in cities). It should be noted, however, that studies conducted in foreign countries (for example, China (Lm et. Al, 2019), USA (Borders, 2007)) have shown that patterns and trends in alcohol consumption and factors affecting consumption in the city and the countryside are often different. Accordingly, a state striving to pursue an effective anti-alcohol policy capable of acting not only on 75% of the population needs to know which factors affect the fact of alcohol consumption and the intensity of consumption by people living in the city, and which ones by people from rural areas, and, accordingly, what measures need to be taken in the city and village.