Paul Goble
Staunton, July 1 – Even before Putin’s expanded war in Ukraine, young men in Russia were dying at rates far higher than their counterparts in any other former Soviet republic, costing the country numerous workers and reducing male life expectancy overall by almost a year, according to Yevgeny Chernyshov.
The Nakanune analyst says that despite efforts to address this problem, the situation hasn’t improved in the last five years, that a third of men now do not live to retirement age, and that this pattern makes it all but impossible for Russian men to have a life expectancy of 78 years by 2030 as Vladimir Putin has decreed (nakanune.ru/articles/124799/).
Deaths from illnesses, alcohol consumption, accidents, suicides and now combat among young men mean that Russia is losing tens of thousands of workers every year, whose places must be filled by immigrants unless the economy of the Russian Federation is to stagnate or decline.
And it also means, Chernyshov continues, that Russia has been able to do little or nothing to reduce the longstanding gap in life expectancy between men and women, a gap that now stands at 11 years and is currently among the highest of any country on earth.
Given that the Kremlin has stopped publishing much demographic data over the leans ast several years to hide what is happening in this and other areas, Chernyshov’s essay is a model of what can be gleaned from a variety of sources, direct and indirect, and a sign that the problems Putin is trying to conceal can’t be hidden completely.
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