Relative Size of Different Rising Generations Varies Widely across Russian Federation

Paul Goble

            Staunton, Oct. 6 – Many discussions about the future of the Russian Federation focus on the impact of the rising generation which will replace older people whose lives and ways of thinking were formed in Soviet times and who often continue to act accordingly, but the rising generation varies in many ways.

            One of the most important involves variations among those groups identified as boomers, millennials, and zoomers in the West not only in the Russian Federation as a whole but in terms of the relationship of the size of these groups in various regions, another product of the demographic differences among them.

            The To Be Precise portal now provides data on these differences, variations that are likely to play a growing role in the way in which people living in them will behave and how leaders who seek to appeal to them will act (tochno.st/materials/karta-pokolenii-gde-v-rossii-bolse-bumerov-millenialov-i-zumerov).

              Millenials, those born between 1946 and 1964, now account for 21 percent of the Russian population overall and are the largest generation in 28 of Russia’s more than 80 federal subjects. They dominate in predominantly ethnic Russian regions where birthrates have been lower and outflow of migrants greater.

              Generation X, those born between 1965 and 1980, form almost 21 percent of the population.  According to the portal, they are “the only generation that does not prevail in any region of Russia.” Instead, boomers, millennials or zoomers form larger shares of the rising generations there.

              Millenials, those born between 1981 and 1996, form 24 percent of the population, some 35 million people in all and the largest generation in Russia and also the one who experienced the radical changes during their personality forming years. It dominates areas around the two capitals and in oil and gas producing regions.

              Finally, the zoomers, born between 1997 and 2012, now account for 17 percent of the population of Russia. In four republics where birthrates have remained highest – Ingushetia, Chechnya, Tyva and the Altai Republic—they form a larger share, between 23 and 29 percent of the total population.