Ten Federal Subjects with Largest Natural Population Declines This Year All Predominantly Ethnic Russian; Ten with Largest Increases All Non-Russian, Rosstat Says

Paul Goble

            Staunton, Nov. 3 – The demographic decline of ethnic Russians and the continuing growth of non-Russians in the Russian Federation is clearly reflected in the latest Russian government figures for changes in the balance between births and deaths in the country’s federal subjects during the first eight months of this year.

            The ten federal subjects where deaths outnumbered births the most were all predominantly ethnic Russian areas near the center while all ten which experienced the greatest increase in population because births outnumbered deaths were all non-Russian ones on the perimeter (newizv.ru/article/general/03-11-2022/rozhdaemost-v-rossii-pochemu-tyva-vperedi-vseh-regionov).

            Obviously, mortality rates affect changes in population size; but those have come down across the country since the pandemic. And so most of the difference between those regions with increased population this year and those with decreases reflect differences in birthrates, with these far higher in non-Russian areas than in ethnic Russian ones.

            But death birth rates have also fallen across the board in non-Russian areas as well as Russian ones, with a single exception -- the Republic of Tyva – a pattern some analysts are now calling “the Tyvan demographic miracle.” Over the past five years, the number of children born annually per 1000 people fell by 2.6 for Russia as a whole, but rose by 3.5 in Tyva.

            Even Chechnya, which has the highest birth rate measured in this way – 19.9 babies per 1000 residents per year – has seen this figure decline by 0.6 children since 2017.  What’s happening in Tyva stands out because it doesn’t have oil reserves and because its pattern is not shared by its neighbors.

            One reason Tyva is so much higher on this rating than others is that far more of the children born there are born out of wedlock. In Russia as a whole, about 22 percent are born to unmarried mothers, but in Tyva, that figure has remained at 59-60 percent throughout recent years.

            What that means is that Tyvans have a large number of children because of poverty and alcoholism and not because of the strength of traditional family ties as in the North Caucasus. It might be possible to reproduce that republic’s success elsewhere by reproducing these features but that would hardly strengthen traditional family values.