Moscow Considering Making Maternal Capital Payments to First-Time Mothers to Hide Rising Mortality Rates

Paul Goble

            Staunton, April 4 – Facing falling birthrates and rising mortality rates, the Russian government is now considering expanding its maternal capital payments to include cash rewards not just to women who have large families but also to those who give birth to their first child, according to Deputy Prime Minister Tatyana Golikova.

            That may be the only means to get Russia out of its current demographic collapse – indeed, it is perhaps the clearest acknowledgement yet by a senior Russian official of just how bad things are – but as the deputy prime minister says, it would require “significant funds,” money that would require a fundamental reordering of the government’s budget.

            Her words (russia.tv/video/show/brand_id/60851/episode_id/2156762/video_id/2168337/) have been reposted many times, another indication of concern about this issue among Russians (e.g, rbc.ru/society/03/04/2019/5ca4ed579a79471f570ee640 and  iz.ru/863875/2019-04-03/golikova-zaiavila-o-neobkhodimosti-novykh-mer-sotcpodderzhki-dlia-sokhraneniia-natcii).

            The idea of paying women for each child is also circulating in the Federtion Council where Senator Andrey Kutepov has called for paying Russian women not only 50,000 rubles (800 US dollars) on the birth of the third child but for each of those after that (iz.ru/863460/2019-04-03/v-sovfede-predlozhili-vyplachivat-50-tys-rublei-na-tretego-i-posleduiushchikh-detei).

            One reason officials like Golikova are focusing on promoting more births is that Russian women are delaying having their first children in order to pursue a career or not having any at all. But another reason, one that the deputy prime minister acknowledged by discussing it is that mortality rates are going up.

            Additional births are the single most effective way to boost life expectancy. Indeed, they may be the only way to do so that could possibly meet Vladimir Putin’s promises to raise life expectancies among Russian men and women significantly by the end of this term.  But there is another reason officials are talking about boosting birthrates, one that is anything but flattering.

            As ever more medical experts are pointing out, rising mortality rates in Russia reflect not just the aging of the population or environmental factors like pollution or alcoholism but also the stress and lack of access to treatment that Putin’s health optimization program and his boost of the pension age have produced (svpressa.ru/society/article/229303/).

            If Moscow could achieve an uptick in the birthrate, even at enormous and distorting cost, that would reduce popular anger about these Putin regimes by allowing the regime to point to increasing life expectancies, even though older people will continue to die as a result of Putin’s policies.

            For the political technologists in the Kremlin, that deception may seem attractive, but no one should be taken in by this shell game in which longer life expectancies won’t mean a reduction of deaths among older age cohorts but only the appearance of more babies, paid for so that Moscow won’t have to provide others with better services and life chances.