Fertility Rates in Central Asian Cities Fell in Half between 1990 and 2023 to Below Replacement Levels in Some

Paul Goble

            Staunton, June 16 – Between 1990 and 2023, fertility rates in the cities of Central Asia fell from 3.5 to 4.2 children per woman per lifetime to 1.8 to 2.3. The latter range is at or just below the replacement one of 2.2; and given the rapid urbanization of the five countries, this decline is already having an impact on overall population growth rates.

            In reporting this, Kazakhstan’s Bugun portal suggests that the small size of apartments in Central Asian cities is responsible: there simply isn’t enough space in them to have children and suggests that many urban residents in the region now see even one child as “a luxury” they can’t afford (bugin.info/detail/roskosh-odnogo-malysha-po/ru).

            On the one hand, that means that the continuing growth of population in the countries of that region comes almost exclusively from still high fertility rates in villages from which migrants to Russia largely come and from increasing life expectancy among both urban and rural Central Asians.

            And on the other, given the continuing high rates of urbanization in all the countries of Central Asia, it also means that the overall population growth there will almost certainly decline faster than many analysts have assumed (windowoneurasia2.blogspot.com/2025/02/birthrates-remain-high-and-life.html).