The Effect of the State Program for the Resettlement of Compatriots to the Russian Far East: The Case of Khabarovsk Krai

The task of maintaining the population in the Far East is one of the most important tasks of the economic and spatial development of the country. One of the ways to maintain the population is to attract migrants to the region. The present study evaluates the effect of the Program of resettlement of compatriots to the Far East, using the method of synthetic control on the example of the Khabarovsk Territory. The aim is to identify the net effect of the program, that is to determine the difference between the actual and hypothetical migration influx in the absence of the program. An analysis of data for the period 2000–2020 showed that, despite the continuing decline in the population, the program had a positive impact, preventing a more significant reduction in migration inflows. The results demonstrate the importance of the program: in 2019, the actual number of migrants exceeded the projected figure by 33,3%, which indicates the significant contribution of the program to mitigating negative demographic trends. The synthetic control method made it possible to create an artificial analogue of the Khabarovsk Territory, reproducing its characteristics as accurately as possible before the introduction of the program, which ensured high reliability of estimates. However, for a sustainable assessment of the effectiveness of the current program, a longer follow-up period is required to take into account the long-term impact of the program on the demographic situation. The work makes a significant contribution to the development of methods for evaluating government programs and offers practical recommendations for improving migration policy in the Far East, emphasizing the importance of an integrated approach to solving demographic problems and pointing to the need for further adjustment of migration policy, strengthening programs to attract the population and, most importantly, the introduction of mechanisms for monitoring their long-term impact based on the assessment of the net effect of existing programs by econometric methods

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