Rosstat Predicts Russian Population Will Fall by More than Seven Million by 2046, Challenging Kremlin Predictions that It will Begin to Grow Again in the 2030s

Paul Goble

            Staunton, Oct. 20 – Earlier this month, the Russian state statistical agency predicted that the population of Russia, not including the Ukrainian territories it has occupied, will fall by three million by 2030, undoubtedly a disappointment to the Kremlin but not a prediction that challenged the Kremlin’s insistence that the population will begin to grow again after that.

            But now Rosstat has issued a new prediction certain to infuriate the Putin regime. It says the population of the Russian Federation, not including the residents of the Ukrainian territories Moscow has occupied, will fall by 7.68 million by 2046, 5.3 percent fewer than now and a figure comparable to the RSFSR in 1981 (moscowtimes.ru/2023/10/20/rosstat-prognoziruet-sokraschenie-chisla-rossiyan-pochti-na-8-mln-chelovek-k-46g-a110719; cf. windowoneurasia2.blogspot.com/2023/10/rosstat-now-says-russias-population-to.html).

            In addition to annoying Kremlin propagandists, the prediction of such a decline means that the number of working age Russians will decline from 83.47 million now to 79.79 million in 2045, while the share under 18 will fall from 18.5 percent to 15.6 percent and that of pension age persons rise from 24.5 percent to 26.9 percent.

            Rosstat also predicted that the number of births each year would fall from 1.245 million now to 1.140 million in 2027 before rising, as the Kremlin has predicted, to 1.426 million in the mid-2040s. But even with this rise, the total population of the Russian Federation will continue to fall, exactly the opposite of what Putin wants and has said will happen.