Two questions

[slovami.livejournal.com]

One: is this sentence correct?

Женщины кыргызской национальности оценивают свое положение в обществе положительно, нежели мужчины (37,9% против 33,8%).
More women of Kyrgyz ethnicity rate their position in society positively than do men (37.9% versus 33.8%).

(Edit: Just to clarify, I didn't write this sentence, it's from http://www.ia-centr.ru/expert/4538/)

If you were using чем, you would have to say больще женщин. Does нежели really not require this? I thought чем and нежели were exactly the same. Is it simply a mistake in the sentence?

(While we’re at it: is there a stylistic difference between чем and нежели?)

Two: for some research I did this semester, I ended up reading a lot of things (laws, political speeches, academic works, etc.) written by Central Asians in Russian. I noticed one interesting thing about their Russian that seemed different from the standard I learned. I always learned that in formations of (general noun class) + (proper noun belonging to that class), such as девочка Маруся (the girl Marusya) or город Москва (the city of Moscow), both parts decline according to function in the sentence. For example:

Уважаемые жители и гости города Таганрога!
Respected residents and guests of the city of Taganrog!

Both город and Таганрог are in the genitive case. But in Central Asian Russian, it seems more standard to decline only the first noun of the pair. For example:

В городе Самарканд
in the city of Samarkand

закон Республики Казахстан
a law of the Republic of Kazakhstan

Is anyone in this community from Central Asia? Do you know if this is generally true of the Central Asian variety of Russian? And can this be found in standard Russian inside Russia, as well?

Thanks, guys! Sorry for the long post!