Declines in the Number of Births and Increases in Prices for Consumer Goods Driving Down Russians’ Purchases of Goods for Babies, ‘Kommersant’ Reports

Paul Goble

            Staunton, Aug. 22 – The Russian government may be able to stop publishing  much demographic data, but it will be hard-pressed to hide the impact of demographic change on Russian behavior in the marketplace – and thus call the attention of both Russians and foreign observers to what is going on.

            That is shown by new data which suggest that purchases of baby strollers have fallen by 25 percent during the first half of 2025 compared to the same period a year earlier, a decline that Kommersant suggests is the direct result of the rapid decline in the number of live births (kommersant.ru/doc/7987930).

            To be sure, the decline in the number of births is not the only factor at work: Rising prices for such goods and stable or even declining real incomes of parents also play a role in driving down purchases of baby goods (moscowtimes.ru/2025/08/22/v-rossii-ruhnul-spros-na-detskie-kolyaski-na-fone-rekordnogo-padeniya-rozhdaemosti-a172471).

            But indirect indications of problems the Kremlin tries to hide do exist and can be exploited, as the late great American demographer Murray Feshbach did with Soviet data decades ago.  It is long past time for those in the West who want to keep track of what is happening in a Russia where usual sources are being closed to look again at his pioneering work.