ASSESSMENT OF SOCIO-DEMOGRAPHIC DETERMINANTS OF RURAL DEVELOPMENT OF THE CENTRAL BLACK EARTH

The article is devoted to the assessment of socio-demographic determinants of the development of rural areas of the Central Black Earth Economic Region. The socio-demographic determinants of the development of rural areas are considered in the work as features of the socio-demographic structure and social, primarily, territorial mobility of the rural population which has a significant impact on the economic, production, social, and demographic potential of rural areas. A comparative analysis of the outcomes of the socio-demographic development of rural areas is carried out in the Central Black Earth Economic Region (CBEER) on the basis of data from the Federal State Statistics Service. The positive trends comprise: equalization of the gender structure of the rural population; a decrease in the mortality rate of CBEER rural population at a rate faster than the national average; a slowdown in the rate of natural decline in the rural population; a slight increase in the proportion of the rural population under the working age; the unemployment level is significantly lower than the national average and the trend towards its further decline. The negative trends include: a significant decline in the rural population and its share in the settlement pattern; low birth rate; the excess ofthe average Russian indicator over the level of each CBEER region; abundance of the death over the birth rate by more than 2 times; an increase in the share of the rural population over the working age and, accordingly, a the demographic burden rise on the working population.


Introduction
The development of rural areas of the Central Black Earth Economic Region cannot be imagined without state regulation of socio-demographic processes. The analysis of demographic processes at the municipal level is especially significant for a number of reasons. In particular, its implementation will make it possible to define both positive and negative trends in the reproduction of the rural areas population, as well as to predict the further development in the field of population reproduction, and calculate the demographic load coefficients.
The current demographic situation in Russia and a number of regions has reached a critical level, and the population decrease has become a threat to the country's national security. Contemporary demographic trends are changing the structure and quality of the population reducing the opportunity of the society stable development. The situation in rural areas is assessed as even more critical due to the migration outflow, natural population decline, and the growth of social pathologies (alcoholism, crime). A number of researchers are inclined to a high likelihood of a negative scenario of transformation of the rural population system and the nature of labor resources expressed in the depopulation of rural areas and a decrease in the number of labor resources (Blinova, 2018;Kirpichev, 2014;Kovalchuk, 2019).
The need to substantiate the choice of means of influencing the socio-demographic processes in general and the processes of ensuring the demographic security of rural areas arises as experience is accumulated in solving demographic issues. The lack of theoretical, methodological and methodical workings aimed at managing the evolution of rural areas is increasingly recognized among representatives of science and practice.

Problem Statement
The research problem is defined by the contradiction between the need to predict the development process of rural areas of the Central Black Earth Economic Region and, on this basis, its regulation, and an insufficiently clear understanding of the specificity of socio-demographic determinants characterizing the crucial problems of sustainable growth.

Research Questions
The regions of the Central Black Earth Economic Region (CBEER), which include five regions of the Central Federal District (CFD), namely, Belgorod, Voronezh, Kursk, Lipetsk and Tambov are selected as the research objects of the impact of socio-demographic determinants on the rural areas development. The designation of socio-demographic determinants of the rural areas development of the Central Black Earth Economic Region is quite relevant. Special opportunities in this case are provided by sociology which allows obtaining systematizing, and theoretically interpreting empirical material that combines the components of CBEER rural areas development. https://doi.org/10.15405/epsbs.2021.11.75 Corresponding Author: Gaidukova Galina Nikolaevna Selection and peer-review under

Purpose of the Study
The main purpose is to study the socio-demographic determinants of the rural areas development of the Central Black Earth Economic Region and to identify positive and negative trends in the rural areas development of the Black Earth Region.

Research Methods
The development of rural areas is a process of complex changes in natural, economic, human, and socio-cultural potential in an inextricable connection with changes in social infrastructure (traffic network, educational institutions, health care, culture, social protection, and etc.).
Factors of a socio-demographic nature, the significance of which allows us to classify them as determinants, are in a special place among the numerous factors that designate the rural areas development of the Central Black Earth Region, as well as other macroregions of Russia. Features of the socio-demographic structure and social, primarily territorial mobility of the rural population which have a significant impact on the economic, production, social, and demographic potential of rural areas are conceived as socio-demographic determinants of the rural areas development of the Central Black Earth Economic Region.
Universal theories that arose in order to compehend the specifics of population reproduction processes in certain historical periods are of great significance in understanding the features of the sociodemographic determination of the rural areas development. They include theories of demographic transition (Ness & Golay, 2020;Zubarev, 2019), epidemiological transition (Cole, 2019;Freire & de Paula Sara Aparecida, 2020;Verma & Kalra, 2020), and reverse epidemiological transition (Kocarnik, 2019;Mccracken & Phillips, 2017;Mercer, 2018). According to Klupt (2005), the significance of these theoretical structures is that "these theories, genetically related to the concepts of westernization, modernization and postmodernization, include the prospects of demographic development in a more general system of views on the direction in which the modern world is moving" (p. 143), and, therefore, allow approaching the consideration of the socio-demographic determinants of the rural areas development in the context of general civilizational growth (Shmuel, 2010).
Recognizing the contribution of the demographic and epidemiological transitions theory to the study of socio-demographic determinants of rural development, it is necessary to take into account the fact that the general patterns identified within these theories should be considered through the prism of socio-economic, political and other trends in the development of a particular region at each stage.
The information base of the study is the data posted on the official website of the Federal State Statistics Service of the Russian Federation.

Findings
The specificity of the socio-demographic determinants of the rural areas development is due to, firstly, the uniqueness of the socio-economic, political and cultural transformations that distinguish Russia from most other countries of the world (with the exception of former USSR states and a number of https: //doi.org/10.15405/epsbs.2021.11.75 Corresponding Author: Gaidukova Galina Nikolaevna Selection and peer-review under  The population decline trend is generally recorded in the regions under consideration (except for the Belgorod region which is extremely attractive for interregional migration, in particular, for North region residents), but the decrease rate in rural residents is much higher than the overall regional ( Figure 02). Dynamics of population growth rates in the subjects of the Central Black Earth Economic Figure 2.
Region, % The Central Black Earth Economic Regions belong to highly urbanized territories (the share of the urban population is over 50 %) with a tendency for a further reduction in the share of the rural population. The downward trend in mortality rates is also recorded in the studied regions ( Figure 05). The Tambov region showed the best dynamics where the reduction was 28.5 % or 6.7 ppm. Similar dynamics can be traced in the Lipetsk (27.9 % or 6.3 ppm), Kursk (26.1 % or 6.9 ppm) and Belgorod (25.6 % or 5.5 ppm) regions. The lowest dynamics is recorded in the Voronezh region, where the mortality rate decreased by 9.7 % or 1.8 ppm. A substantive role in the high mortality rate belongs to the peculiarities of the Russian mentality. The researchers note that: https://doi.org/10.15405/epsbs.2021.11.75 Corresponding Author: Gaidukova Galina Nikolaevna Selection and peer-review under responsibility of the Organizing Committee of the conference eISSN:  577 Forms such as risky behavior (characterized by a lack of personal activity and bad habits), and behavior associated with the need to receive medical care in extreme situations (manifested only when symptoms of the disease appear or its development) prevail in the overall strategy of self-preservation population behavior (Babintsev et al., 2020, p. 3).
The current mortality rate of the rural population in the Lipetsk region is 2.06 times higher than the birth rate, in the Tambov region -2.07 times, in the Belgorod region -2.08 times, in the Voronezh region -2.23 times, in the Kursk region -2.79 times, while this ratio is 1.36 on average for the Russian  https://doi.org/10.15405/epsbs.2021.11.75 Corresponding Author: Gaidukova Galina Nikolaevna Selection and peer-review under  It is characteristic that the share of the rural population under the working age remains below the average Russian values by 1-2 % throughout the entire study period. An equally negative trend is a significant excess of the share of people over working age in the CBEER regions as compared to the Russian Federation. A significantly greater discrepancy is recorded in this case than in the rural population under the working age, by 4.3-6.5 %.
As a result of the prevailing trends, the demographic load in CBEER regions has a stable dynamics of increase throughout the study period. The rate of increase in the demographic burden in the constituent entities of the Central Black Earth Economic Region during the study period is lower (from 30.4 to 43.4 %) than in the Russian Federation (43.5 %). The demographic load on the working rural population of the regions in absolute terms remains higher than the all-Russian values by 24-93 people. The highest demographic load is noted in the Kursk region and amounts to 938 people per 1000 working rural population in 2019.

Conclusion
Therefore, positive and negative trends in the dynamics of socio-demographic determinants of rural development are highlighted in the Central Black Earth Economic Region in 2005. https://doi.org/10.15405/epsbs.2021 responsibility of the Organizing Committee of the conference eISSN:  579 Positive trends include: alignment of the gender structure of the rural population; a decrease in the mortality rate of the rural population at a pace faster than the national average (with the exception of the Voronezh region); a slowdown of natural decline in the rural population; a slight increase in the proportion of the rural population under the working age; the prevailing unemployment level is significantly lower than the national average and tends to further decrease.
The main negative trends are: a significant reduction in the rural population and its share in the structure of settlement; low birth rate; excess of the average Russian value over the level of each CBEER region; abundance of the death rate over the birth rate by more than 2 times; an increase in the share of the rural population over the working age and, accordingly, a growth of the demographic burden on the working population.