Regional Resilience of the Ural Federal District in Economic Shocks and Crises: Medico-Demographic and Environmental Aspects
Health, demographic and environmental consequences of 1998 and 2008 economic crises for the Ural Federal District are considered in the paper. Regional resilience is defined as the ability of a regional socio-economic system to withstand, absorb or overcome an internal or external economic shock. The quantitative analysis of regional resilience of the subject entities of the Ural Federal District is based on two interrelated dimensions: resistance, those are the vulnerability or sensitivity of a regional socio-economic system to disturbances and disruptions; and the speed and extend of recovery from such a disruption. Because resilience as a concept captures resistance to the shock and recovery from it, resistance indexes and recovery indexes are used for assessing the impact of regions to recessionary shocks. Three sets of resilience indicators were used: economic, environmental and medico-demographic ones. The main criteria for selecting resilience indicators were their robustness as a measure of the territorial impact of the economic crisis and availability of long time series. Special attention is paid to the question identification of the qualitative and quantitative factors, which form the territorial characteristics enabling some regions to resist, or move out of, economic downturn more effectively than others. Unfortunately, a valid answer to the question why some regions are more able to withstand an economic downturn than others, or are able to recover faster, cannot be given at present. Resilience to an economic shock does not necessarily imply that the economy is otherwise strong and performing well over the longer-term. Regions that experience strong economic growth prior to a shock may appear to be less resilient. Such components of the regional socio-economic system as reserves of natural resources, sectoral structure of regional economy, skills of population, diversified economy and quality of governance do not define uniquely regional resilience.