Russia’s Birthrate will Continue to Fall Unless State Planners Return to Soviet Arrangement where Apartment Blocks were Surrounded by Common Yards, Experts Say

Paul Goble

            Staunton, Oct. 2 – Many believe that Moscow can boost birthrates by increasing the size of apartments or building individual houses, but experts at a meeting in Yekaterinburg suggest that neither will do the job because they fail to provide state support for children growing up and thus shift that burden almost entirely to potential parents, Elena Rychkova says.

            In Soviet times, the Nakanune journalist says, the government kept the birthrate higher than it would otherwise be by creating yards around apartment blocks so that the community would bear the cost of supervising children rather than that burden being shifted to parents alone (nakanune.ru/articles/125115/).

            As land prices have increased, banks have favored construction of buildings closer together, a move that has destroyed parks and means that parents by themselves must bear all the costs of supervising children. Consequently, demographers say, larger apartments or separate ho        mes will do little to change that part of their calculation.

            For parks to return and thus for birthrates to rise, the experts continued, the state must take a larger role in urban planning and insist on parks around buildings rather than using up all the available land because of its rising costs. That way young people can have children confident that the community will bear much of the cost of supervising them.

            This judgment is critically important because it highlights the reality that larger apartments aren’t the real solution and that banks and builders will remain in opposition to almost any policies that might reverse the accelerating decline of the birthrate in the Russian Federation.