Paul Goble
Staunton, Dec. 17 – After two decades of serious progress in the reduction of infant mortality, with rates falling from 15.3 per 1000 live births in 2000 to 4.4 per 1000 in 2020, the number of infant deaths between January and October 2021 ticked upward to 4.5 per 1000, economist Igor Nikolayev says.
The most optimistic reading of this is that it is a statistical aberration and that the downward trend will continue or that it is the result of the covid pandemic, he continues. But there are other explanations which are more disturbing, especially as increases in infant mortality push down overall life expectancy especially hard (echo.msk.ru/blog/nikolaev_i/2955068-echo/).
There simply isn’t enough data to blame covid for this, he says demographers tell him; and at least some of them fear Russia may have reached the lowest point for infant mortality it can given the poor state of public health and the healthcare system. Other countries, however, have much lower rates.
But the real meaning of the new figures is this: Just as outsized declines in infant mortality were responsible for the increases in Russians’ life expectancies in the past, so even a small decline will lead to much larger falls in those figures, prompting popular concerns about conditions in their country that the Kremlin would prefer them not to ask.
And precisely because the Kremlin has made increases in life expectancy its response to criticism of Putin’s health care optimization program which has left much of the country without adequate medical treatment centers, the Putin regime is now going to have to come up with another response as life expectancy figures stagnate or even decline.
The regime has already blamed the pandemic for earlier reports about this looming threat; but the coronavirus can only explain away so much, especially when those dying are the youngest members of society whose passing has the largest impact on the overall figures for how long Russian men and women can expect to live.
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