Gender Differences in Housing Provision in Russia: An Age–Period–Cohort Decomposition, 2003–2023

The well‑being of women and men within households is a central concern of gender research in demography and economics, yet it has rarely been examined in relation to housing in Russia using large‑scale microdata. Over 2000–2024, Russia’s housing provision increased by half against a backdrop of household nuclearisation, a female longevity advantage, and uneven generational access to the post‑Soviet housing stock. Whether this expansion reflects macro‑level growth or generational replacement – and whether gender differentially shapes the housing trajectory – remains an open question. We use Rosstat’s Household Budget Survey microdata for 2003–2023 (2.61 million observations) and apply an age–period–cohort (APC) decomposition with the Intrinsic Estimator (IE). The pseudo-panel comprises 354 cells across 19 five-year cohorts (1930–2024), 18 age groups (0–4, 5–9, …, 85+) and 21 survey years. The APC decomposition is estimated separately for the combined, male and female samples. Under the IE identification, age is the largest component of the variance of the per-capita floor area (46%; 37% for men and 51% for women), followed by birth cohort (29%) and survey year (25%). The split between the components and the direction of the intergenerational gradient depend on the identifying restriction, whereas the gender difference in cohort and age effects is robust to it. The within-cohort improvement (+9.4 m 2 ) is partly offset by a negative compositional shift (−1.8 m 2 ): older, better-housed cohorts are being replaced by younger, worse-housed ones. The age profile reveals low housing provision at ages 30–44 and a peak at ages 65–69, when the household contracts to a childless couple for men and, more often, to a one-person household for women. For women, the swing between the two stages is nearly twice that for men. Mean housing provision is higher for women (+2.83 m 2 in 2023). The gender gap is significantly positive in most cohorts born in 1935–1974 and significantly changes sign in the cohorts born in 1975–2014, where men are better housed; in the two youngest cohorts (2015–2019 and 2020–2024), observed in only part of the survey waves, the gap is not statistically significant. The gender gap in housing provision largely reflects the demographically determined composition of households – for example, the prevalence of elderly women living alone (widows, elderly women who have never been married) – rather than differences in individual housing rights. The growth in the mean per-capita floor area over 20 years conceals opposing dynamics within and between cohorts, as well as the zigzag pattern of housing provision variation across the stages of the family life cycle.