Fertility Rate in Russia Falls to New Low, Highlighting Failure of Putin’s Efforts

Paul Goble

            Staunton, Jan. 23 – The fertility rate in the Russian Federation continued to decline in 2025, down to an average of 1.374 children per woman per lifetime, a figure far below the 1.77 in 2015 and slightly below the 1.4 number in 2024 and even further under the 2.2 children per woman per lifetime needed to keep the population at a stable level, Rosstat reports.

            Only two non-Russian republics, Chechnya, with a fertility rate of 2.56 and Tyva with one of 2.214, had rates above the replacement levels; and in both these cases, the figures had fallen slightly from a year earlier (vedomosti.ru/society/articles/2026/01/23/1171174-summarnii-koeffitsient-rozhdaemosti-prodolzhil-snizhatsya).

            The lowest fertility rates in 2025 were in three predominantly ethnic Russian oblasts, Leningrad with a figure of 0.914, Smolensk with one of 1.012, and Vladimir, with one of 1.059 children per woman per lifetime, a pattern that means they and other ethnic Russian regions will decline in size while non-Russian federal subjects will be more stable or grow.

            Alarmed by this evidence of demographic decline, Vladimir Putin has been promoting large families as a “traditional Russian value” and promising to spend more money in the out years to help boost family size. But because of his war in Ukraine, he has been cutting back spending on healthcare with an “optimization” campaign (nakanune.ru/articles/124281/).

            Demographers are not impressed and say that Russia and Russians will see growth in this decade only if the economic expectations of the population are realized and if potential parents believe that they are entering a new era of stability rather than one in which unexpected events like the invasion of Ukraine can be avoided.

            That is because even if financial incentives can lead women to have more children, the declining number of women in the prime cohort for giving birth is now falling so fast that the latter factor is likely to overwhelm in small increase in the number of children Russians and others elect to have.

            Alla Makarentseva, a demographer at the Russian Economy of Economics and State Servce, says that Moscow still has some chances to raise the fertility rate, “but they are not unlimited” and no one should expect a radical change in direction unless and until the economy and people’s assumptions about the future change.