MOSCOW — The Russian state statistics service has halted its monthly reports on the population’s real income, or income adjusted for inflation, after years of declining numbers suggested a fall in Russian’s standard of living.

Economists were already keeping a wary eye on the service, known as Rosstat, after the appointment of a new director in December, just days after President Vladimir V. Putin criticized what he called the poor quality of state statistics.

A flurry of new, optimistic economic data followed. The new director, Pavel Malkov, revised figures for the gross domestic product in past years to show, for example, that 2016 was not actually a recession year in Russia, but that it showed modest growth.

Last month, the agency released its estimate for 2018 growth showing the best economic results in six years: an expansion of 2.3 percent, well above the consensus of independent analysts of 1.7 percent. Even economists at Russian state banks were skeptical. The service attributed much of the unexpected growth to a fortuitous burst of construction in December.