Russia’s Demographic Crisis Deepens and under Putin Threatens to Become Irreversible

Paul Goble

            Staunton, Mar. 3 – The fertility rate in Russia has fallen to 1.3 children per woman per lifetime, far below the replacement level of 2.2, a trend that means not only will each woman have on average fewer children than are needed to keep the population of that country stable but that with each passing generation there will be fewer potential mothers as well.

            That means that Russia’s demographic crisis is “becoming ever deeper” and threatens to become irreversible because even if the government is able to push up the fertility rate slightly, it is unlikely to reach the 2.2 level needed for the population to remain stable or prevent the number of potential mothers from declining (nakanune.ru/articles/124407/).

            Up to now, Nakanune journalist Elena Rychkova says, Kremlin efforts even to boost the fertility rate have largely failed or even proved counterproductive as far as the desires of the Russian authorities are concerned. Banning or restricting abortions region by region have not boosted the birthrate but increased abortion tourism and the number of illegal abortions.

            Propaganda, the Kremlin’s favorite device, has led women with three or more children already to have more but not boosted birthrates in families with two or less. As a result, fertility rates among Russia’s Muslims are either increasing or at least not falling nearly as fast as increasingly urbanized ethnic Russians, hardly what the powers that be want.

            And offering awards like Hero Mothers or money isn’t working either. Instead, surveys show it is changing the timing of births by women but not the number of children they elect to have. As a result, women may have two children when it pays but not have any more when it not only doesn’t but pushes many of them into poverty.

            According to Rychkova, who writes regularly on demographic issues, fertility rates will continue to fall given urbanization and the government’s failure to provide both adequate housing for families and a stable future. When people are forced to live in two room apartments, they won’t have children; and when they fear far or economic disaster, they won’t either.

            For Moscow to succeed in fighting the near universal decline in fertility rates around te world and especially in its own country, the Kremlin would have to  change its approach, devoting far more money to housing and childcare services and avoiding the kind of crises sparked by war and the fear of war that its current policies are producing.

            But even if the Kremlin did change all those policies, it would likely still fail to reverse the decline in fertility rates by very much. That could happen if and only if the culture of families change and men become more involved in taking care of children and the household. Such a shift isn’t likely given Putin’s cult of manliness.

            And changing that is likely to prove difficult if not impossible, something that will only  accelerate Russia’s demographic decline, especially if the country continues to lose young men who might otherwise become fathers by sending them to fight and die in massive numbers in conflicts like Putin’s war in Ukraine.