Russia Population Set to Decline by 50 Percent This Century, Moscow Demographer Says

Paul Goble

            Staunton, August 11 – Unless there are radical changes in government policies and in the family size preferences of Russians, the population of the Russian Federation will decline by the end of the century from 140 million now to only 70 million in 2100, according to Yury Krupnov of Moscow’s Institute for Demography, Migration and Regional Development.

            Speaking on the “Govorit Moskva” radio station this week, Krupnov said that the recent uptick in the birthrate reflects the increased share of women in prime child-bearing cohorts rather than government policies or changes in the proclivity of Russians to have more children rather than fewer (ng.ru/news/551343.html).

                But that generation of women is about to be replaced by one that be 70 percent smaller in 2025 than the one in 2010, and the result will be a demographic decline far steeper and deeper than even those Russia experienced in the 1990s, the Moscow expert said.  That will half the population of the country by 2100, and Russia will “simply die out.”

            The Russian government has failed to develop a complex of measures to address this challenge, he said, arguing that the Kremlin’s much-ballyhooed “maternal capital will not change the situation.”

            Krupnov also said that those who believe immigration can stave off this disaster are wrong.   Indeed, by failing to prevent the influx of illegal immigrants, he continued, there are now approximately 12 million illegals in Russia, people who live by their own rules and who have become “an unseen state within a state” (utro.ru/articles/2016/08/09/1293170.shtml).