Fertility Rate among RF Women Fell to 1.41 in 2023, Far Below Replacement Level and Lowest since 1999

Paul Goble

            Staunton, July 27 – The fertility rate among women in the Russian Federation – the number of children per woman over a lifetime – fell to 1.41 in 2023, well below the level of 2.2 that would maintain the current level of population, the lowest since 1999, and a significant decline since the high during that period of 1.78 in 2015.

            In reporting these figures to a Moscow meeting of the Festival of New Media, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov describe them as “a catastrophe” (t.me/mnm_masterskaya/3145, rbc.ru/society/26/07/2024/66a3443c9a7947168745ad16  and kasparov.ru/material.php?id=66A3584AA7489).

            Part of the reason for this decline is the number of women in the prime child-bearing cohorts as a result of low birthrates 20 to 30 years ago. While the fertility rate of 1.41 reflects the births women from 15 to 50 have, most births come from the generation of women that is now extremely small.

            But this low fertility rate is likely to continue not only in the near term but into the more distant future, as Russians urbanize and choose to have fewer children and as low birthrates now echo in the future just as the low birthrates during World War II long have echoed in Soviet and Russian realities.

            But such contractions in the fertility rate mean that Russia will find it more difficult to man the economy or field an army and will be more rather than less dependent on immigrant workers, a group that the Putin government is now seeking to restrict rather than allow to continue to expand.

            And there is an even more disturbing consequence of this low fertility rate if as there is every reason to believe past patterns continue to hold: the summary fertility rate is only as high as it is because Muslim nationalities in the Russian Federation still have higher fertility rates than do ethnic Russians.

            That means that over time, the share of ethnic Russians in the Russian Federation will continue to decline, a trend that will make it ever more difficult for the Kremlin to promote Putin’s ideas about a Russian world even within Russian borders and mean that any expansion of those borders will send the percentage of Russians under Moscow’s control plunging even more.