Birthrates in North Caucasus have Now Fallen to Below All-Russian Level

Paul Goble

    Staunton, Apr. 12 – For decades, birthrates in the Muslim republics of the North Caucasus were far higher than those in ethnic Russian parts of the country, a pattern Moscow relied on to keep the population of the Russian Federation growing but one that many Russians feared was changing its ethnic mix.

    Now, however, something unexpected has happened, the number of births in the Muslim republics of the North Caucasus and also in Buddhist Kalmykia which neighbors them has fallen below the all-Russian average during the first two months of this year (akcent.site/novosti/40264).

    During January and February 2025, births across the region from a year earlier, the result, surveys say, of the fears of people there about the future and about their having sufficient incomes and resources to support a family (stav.aif.ru/society/person/brat-chechnyu-v-primer-zhenshchiny-ne-hotyat-rozhat-dazhe-na-kavkaze).

    The number of births was down by almost five percent in Ingushetia and North Ossetia, by seven percent in Chechnya, and by ten percent in Kalmykia, all figures significantly greater than the three percent decline for Russia as a whole and ones that will have their own echo in the future because there will be fewer North Caucasian women who will be potential mothers.

    Russian nationalists may celebrate this development because it will reduce the growth in the share of Muslims in the population of the country as a whole, but Russian economists and officials will not because it means that they will have to find workers elsewhere and the population of the country as a whole will decline even more rapidly than has been predicted.