Poorer Ethnic Russian Regions Now ‘at Brink of Demographic Collapse,’ ‘Club of Regions’ Says

Paul Goble

            Staunton, Mar. 13 – Muslim republics in the North Caucasus still have fertility rates at or near the replacement levels; and oil and gas-producing federal subjects with higher incomes also have fertility levels close to replacement levels. But ethnic Russian regions without such resources are “at the brink of demographic collapse,” according to the Club of Regions portal.

            In an analysis of data assembled by the To Be Precise portal last month, the regionalist portal says that to this point, Moscow has not adapted its maternal capital program to these differences among three and thus instead of helping to improve Russia’s demographic situation is in fact making it worse (club-rf.ru/theme/660).         

            Moscow’s one-size-fits-all approach fails not only to recognize these differences but others as well, including between the better off and the poorer components of the population in the Russian regions with oil and gas reserves and higher incomes. There, what Moscow is doing is helping the better off strata of the population but doing little to slow the decline of the poor.

            The Kremlin’s maternal capital program has not prevented fertility rates from falling to one (in Vladimir Oblast, the fertility rate is 1.059) or even less than one (in Leningrad Oblast, the figure is now 0.914), both of which are far below the 2.2 fertility rate needed to keep the population stable.

            Not only are Moscow’s policies pushing down the fertility rate in these predominantly ethnic Russian regions but they are accelerating the outflow of young people and pushing the number of births down still further, putting these places “on the brink of demographic collapse” and harming the country as a whole as a result.