Consumer Spending in the Mirror of Aggregate Transfer Accounts: National and Regional Aspects

Abstract

Building upon a series of the author’s prior publications in the journal Voprosy Statistiki (in 2019–2022), this new article further deve- lops the idea of applying National Transfer Accounts (NTAs) as a toolkit for economic and demographic analysis of a wide range of macro patterns in the economy, both nationally and on the regional level. The author highlights the NTAs' practical utility, allowing for a more detailed, compared to the System of National Accounts (SNA), analysis of the reallocation of financial resources, including through the prism of dependents and those who finance them. It includes a concise description of the current research concept and the methodology approach chosen for the analysis.Based on the author's calculations of the analyzed indicators at the national and regional levels, the body of the article confirms that the influence of the age structure of society on consumer spending of the population manifests itself in the priorities of consumer demand. On the macro level, the comparative example of Russia, Sweden and Mexico shows commonalities and specificities in the financing of con- sumer demand by resources of the private and public sectors and the corresponding timespans of running deficit-free economic lifecycle in these countries. As a comparative framework for the Russian economy, the countries with the most (Sweden) and least (Mexico) generous state subsidies for the consumption of the population in the form of current transfer support were selected. In the regional aspect of the analysis, the structural characteristics of the age profile of the regions (from 2011 to 2020) were compared with the accumulated (per capita) dynamics of regional consumer spending with a pronounced age bias (on education and healthcare). The regional results were analyzed in the context of the overall economic situation. The article illustrates the qualitatively different consumer demand priorities of the «young» and «advanced- in-years» regions by the comparative infographics case studying the Republic of Ingushetia and Tver Region (regions with diametrically opposite features of the demographic structure). The author has dealt with consumer behavior models across various ages in the context of the Strauss-Howe generational theory, devised by William Strauss and Neil Howe.The author demonstrates how the COVID-19 pandemic impacted the sources of financing household spending on the level of the economy as a whole.The concluding section draws methodological parallels between national transfer accounts and such summary indicators as human de- velopment indices and the UN Sustainable Development Goals to be considered in macroeconomic and regional analysis