Kremlin Must Focus on Reducing Deaths and Outmigration rather than on Boosting Births and Attracting Immigrants, Inozemtsev Says

Paul Goble

            Staunton, February 28 – Faced with an excess of deaths over births, the Russian authorities are responding again as they have in the past by focusing almost exclusively on boosting the number of children born rather than on reducing the number of people who die prematurely, Vladislav Inozemtsev says.

            That is a mistake because while Moscow has some tools to fight declining fertility rates, it is up against a trend that it cannot reverse: “Russia today is the West of the 1970s, a society of people who live for themselves, and neither maternal assistance nor economic growth will quickly change this trend,” the Russian economist says.

            Consequently, “if the powers that be want to stop depopulation, they must consider another part of the equation, mortality rates,” he continues, and seek to reduce the number of Russians who die far earlier than they need to. Unfortunately, the Kremlin today is doing exactly the reverse (rbc.ru/opinions/society/28/02/2020/5e577c0c9a79479181064928).

                And at the same time, Inozemtsev argues, the Kremlin should stop obsessing about population numbers in general. “The image of a European and technologically developed Russia with 120 million people and an average age of 45 should attract us far more than that of Nigeria with its population of 260 million and an average age of 18.” 

            If Russia focuses on reducing deaths, “improving health care rather than ‘optimizing’ it” out of existence is “a much more correct path to the revival of the national economy than any investments in infrastructure or the military-industrial complex,” not only because health care keeps people alive but helps promote the development of other sectors, the economist says.

            Many in Moscow think that Russia’s demographic problems can be solved by migration. After all, while there were 316,200 more deaths than births in Russia last year, the country’s population declined only 35,600, the result of immigration.  While that is true, it isn’t the panacea many believe it to be.

            “On the one hand,” he says, “a great deal is said about those who are coming but almost nothing about those who are leaving,” including the roughly two million Russians who have left since Putin became president. Instead of trying to hold these mostly educated people to help the country, the government has adopted repressive policies that are driving them out.

And “on the other hand,” the consequences of immigration are “contradictory.” The new arrivals allow for the filling of jobs but they represent a brake on modernization. And thus, in solving the problem the regime wants to address, they create an even larger one in its place, Inozemtsev says. 

            These things underscore why Russia needs a new demographic policy, one that focuses not on numbers but on the abilities of those who live on its territory.  That will prove more expensive in the short term, but it will yield far larger benefits over time.