Kremlin’s Efforts to Boost Birthrate Failing Largely Because Potential Parents Think Conditions in Putin’s Russia are Getting Worse, El Murid Says

Paul Goble
    Staunton, Jan. 31 – The Kremlin keeps comes up with new programs to boost the birthrate – including paying women for having children, banning abortions in private clinics, and restricting contraception. But all are falling short because worsening conditions of life under Putin have reduced the readiness of Russians to have children, Anatoly Nesmiyan says.
    Nesmiyan, who blogs under the screen name El Murid, concedes that the declining size of the cohort of women in prime childbearing age groups plays a role; but he argues that the impact of repression and uncertainties under Putin is having a far larger impact (t.me/anatoly_nesmiyan/23260 reposted at kasparov.ru/material.php?id=679BA0E86F52E).
    Russians who might otherwise be giving birth aren’t because they don’t want to bring children into a world where they can’t predict what life will be like for any offspring, El Murid continues; and that factor is going to continue until Putin radically changes course or leaves the scene.
    “Considering that a break in the clouds is not now visible and there thus remains a firm conviction that the future will be only worse,” the blogger says, “normal people are taking normal decisions to wait and not to condemn their child to that nightmare into which the ruling regime has transformed the country.”
    There are many indications that what El Murid is saying is true, including a new study of decisions by Russian university students not to have children just published by the Horizontal Russia portal (semnasem.org/articles/2025/01/28/my-praktikuem-vozderzhanie-ili-ya-uhozhu-v-lesboseparatizm-pochemu-studentki-ne-hotyat-rozhat-dazhe-za-bonusy-ot-gosudarstva).
    That study highlights the fact that young Russians are also postponing having children because they believe they will have a better life for themselves and their children if they invest time and money now not on the start of a family but only after they have established themselves in their careers and have adequate housing.