Russia's Children

Russia’s Children

Every feature in this issue has something to do with children (a child’s view of her father as intelligence agent; children experiencing art in utero; foster children; a group of young professionals exposing their children to the wild nature of Karelia). This got me thinking about demographics.

Early this year, Russia’s leaders trumpeted a demographic success: in 2009, for the first time in 15 years, the country’s population had risen, not fallen. Sure, the scale was insignificant (an increase of 5300 souls, or 0.004% of the population, between January 1 and October 1) and the numbers were likely influenced by the sort of statistical manipulations we expect from government bodies. Still, it was a sign of optimism amid the constant reports of the slow and steady disappearance of the Russian nation.

The peak of Russia’s population in the post-war era was 1991, when it was registered as 148,689,000. But then, after the break-up of the Soviet Union, emigration, declining birth rates and skyrocketing death rates conspired to reduce Russia’s population by as much as half a percent per year. (By way of comparison, in 2009 the Russian death rate was 14.2 per 1000 persons, while for the U.S. in 2009 it was 8.4 per 1000).

Then, in the last Russian census, in 2002, the country’s population was recorded as 145.3 million persons – a drop of over three million in a decade. This led the UN to warn that, if present trends continued, Russia’s population might shrink by a third by 2050.

Then something surprising happened, from 2007 to 2009, Russia saw an unexpected surge in birth rates, to a record (for the past 25 years) of 12.4 per 1000 (the U.S. rate in 2009 was 13.8 per 1000).

Still, this was not enough to stem the tide: with a birth rate of 12.4 and a death rate of 14.2, your population is going to continue to slide. Russia’s young families are doing their part, bumping up the birth rate. Yet resolving Russia’s demographic crisis requires reducing the astronomical death rates (the current life expectancy in Russia is 67.8, or about 11 years lower than in other industrialized countries; it is 61.8 for males and 74.1 for females).

These high death rates have many causes: abnormally high levels of alcoholism; disproportionately high levels of mortality from heart disease and infectious diseases; one of the world’s highest levels of death from external causes (injury or poisoning). And while these high numbers are part of a larger trend beginning in the Soviet era, the numbers got decidedly worse after the failure of Gorbachev’s anti-alcohol campaign. In fact, had Russia been able to hold its mortality levels steady from 1986 to the present day, one study estimated, six and a half-million Russians would not have died. If Russia had been able to have mortality rates equal to France since 1986, 18 million lives would have been saved.

These sobering statistics notwithstanding, there is a way out. Experts agree that the Russian government can best address the issue by putting a priority on investing in its people – in health care, in quality of life, in education, in reducing atmospheric, soil and water pollutants.

And such investments will have the highest returns if the focus is on children. Plus, it is just the right thing to do.

Enjoy the issue!

p.s. This July marks 15 years since we took over Russian Life. Thank you again to all our loyal readers and hard-working contributors. Here’s to the next 15 years!