LAUSR

Abstract Excessive differentiation of socio-economic development of individual regions of the country is a concern of the international scientific community. Since 1988, the European Union has a “policy of convergence”, which aims to help poor regions to compete in the single European market and to approximate the social and economic indicators to the parameters of the more developed areas. The Russian government is also taking measures that are aimed at the development of backward regions. The thesis that the level of differentiation is one of the factors for sustainability of regions was proved in the article. High differentiation of regions leads to social upheaval, and low differentiation leads to stagnation in the development of territories. The task of assessment of the correlation between the level of differentiation and the level of sustainability of the regional economy is solved in this article. The municipal statistics of Russia and the European Union has been used for the study.