Abstract
Russia is the biggest country in the world and is also today one of the 10th most important economy in the world. In fact, Russia is situated at the 14th world rank concerning its total GDP for 2005 with approximately 763 000 million $, and at the 10th world rank concerning its PPP GDP for 2005 with 1 560 000 million $. After the crisis caused by the collapse of the Soviet Union, Russia's economy slowly began its recovery, until the financial crisis broke this positive trend in 1998. Russia revived from the financial crisis quite quickly with industry-led growth aided by the depreciated rouble. Then, since the beginning of 1999 the country's economy has experienced a positive trend, which naturally has reflected to its GDP. In fact, the performance of the Russian economy since 1998 has been impressive. Between 1998 and 2006, Russian GDP expanded by an estimated 57.6%, while real incomes of the population grew by 65%.Despite this economic growth, the indicators of life level places Russia among countries with intermediate level of life. The demographic situation is particularly worrying, with a life expectancy of 59 years old for men and 72 for women and a decreasing and aging population. The number of people living below the subsistence level reached 13, 5% in 2005, which is very important even if we observe a decrease these last few years.
