Paul Goble
Staunton, June 30 – Despite all its talk about supporting marriage and other traditional values, the Russian government has put in place policies regarding single-parent households that have had the effect of boosting the divorce rate across the Russian Federation, Mikhail Sergeyev, head of the economics section of Nezavisimaya Gazeta.
Indeed, he says, UN data show that Russia is now “one of the leaders” as far as the number of divorces per 1000 people annually. In that country, 4.7 divorces now take place for every 1000 residents compared to a rate of 1.5 to 2.4 for the US and many other countries (ng.ru/economics/2025-06-30/1_9283_marriage.html).
Sergeyev makes this observation in the course of discussion how changes in Russia since 1991 have affected demography. He notes that the number of marriages where the partners live far from one another has increased, leading to a new kind of polygamy where some in these unions form second families and where as a result, official marriages tend to break up.
Sometimes, especially in the North Caucasus, couples enter into fictional marriages or exit by equally fictional divorces in order to take advantage of Russian social policies. As a result, he says, the number of marraiges registered there fell from 7.3 to 4 between 2012 and 2022, while in Dagestan alone for that period, the figures showed a decline from 7.6 to 3.
Women who give birth outside of official marriages get social welfare payments. As a result, many choose not to be married or at least not married officially, Sergeyev continues. And consequently, in 2022, 29.3 percent of all births took place outside of marriages as officially registered.
The divorce rate also shot up in that federal district from 2.5 divorces per 1000 people to 5.4 per 1000 in 2022. (In Dagestan, the jump was even greater, sociologists say. There, divorces per 1,000 population rose from 1.6 to 5.9 over that decade, a trend that must be kept in mind in assessing demographic data more generally.
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