One of the national projects is under threat
The first months of the crisis put a halt to the talk of an imminent population explosion that the country's leaders have been predicting for a number of years. The baby-boom was a pet topic of former President and current Prime Minister Vladimir Putin. The problem was also a major plank in Dmitry Medvedev's election platform. Toward the end of 2008 both leaders were pleased to note the growing birth rate and the Ministry of Healthcare and Social Development was confidently making optimistic forecasts. However, over the past few months the topic has never been raised at the high level and experts claim that the country is facing a demographic slump.
The Government, however, is still working under the assumption that the country faces a bright demographic future. The Health Ministry's forecast that the birth rate will increase by nearly 26% by the end of next year has not been questioned by any Government officials. According to the director of the Department of Medical and Social Problems of Family, Motherhood, and Childhood, Olga Sharapova, 1.7 million babies will be born in 2009.
On love, women, and children
In a nationwide broadcast on Rossiya channel shortly before the New Year, Vladimir Putin boasted the main achievement of the Government's demographic policy: the birth rate had increased by about 7% in 2008. This was the Prime Minister's last public statement on what had been his pet topic for the previous several years. Addressing the Federal Assembly in May 2006, Mr Putin described demography as "the most acute problem facing modern Russia." And he went on: "We are really talking about love, women, and children - about family." He proposed creating the "basic mother's capital". A couple of months later, speaking at the Lesnyie Dali holiday home, he impressed United Russia by saying that the Government had earmarked 32 billion roubles for said purpose and invested another 50 billion in various social funds aimed at dealing with the same issues.
In the summer of 2006 first Deputy Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev, addressing the Security Council, described the demography problem as "the gravest and most dangerous" problem. "Shrinking population," the future president said, "is a national challenge." At the end of 2008 Dmitry Medvedev, like Vladimir Putin, noted some progress in boosting the birth rate, announcing that 100,000 more babies were born in Russia in 2008 than in 2007.
The importance of boosting the reproductive activities of Russian women was clear: by that time average life expectancy in Russia had dropped to 59 years for men and 71 years for women, 12 years less than in the U.S. and five years less even than in China.
The upbeat notes disappeared from the rhetoric of the national leaders as soon as the early signs of the crisis appeared. According to the company Medialogy, the number of times demographic problems are mentioned has practically dropped to zero. The topic has ceased to be relevant. Experts say that the economic crisis has aggravated long-standing problems. They call into question the relevance of the 2006-2008 boom and say that it was artificially created.
Demographic political PR
Anatoly Antonov, Head of the Family Sociology and Demography Chair at Moscow University's Sociology Department, fears that the failure of the policy of stimulating births will be attributed to the crisis. He points out that the spike in birth rates in 2006-2008 was due to the increased number of men and women born in the first half of the 1980s. These people married in the mid-2000s on the eve of the election campaign, which was used to promote United Russia and the presidential candidate. "All this was claimed to be the result of their policy," the expert said in a radio broadcast a week ago. In reality, however, it was an expected structural phenomenon that will obviously fade in 2010. Now that compensation growth is coming to an end, the former parameters will return: very low and still declining numbers of people wishing to have children. It will be a totally dark streak until 2025." Anatoly Vishnevsky, director of the Higher School of Economics Demography Institute, believes next year's birthrate may drop by 100,000-200,000. Some women will have abortions, others will be careful not to become pregnant, the expert told Nezavisimaya Gazeta. "The financial crisis cannot but affect the birthrate, given that incomes are shrinking. If job loss becomes likely, prudent people do not have children. The crisis is bound to have a negative impact; the rate of abortions is sure to grow. For the majority of people, the crisis came out of nowhere. People did not expect the situation to deteriorate so quickly, to lose their jobs and be unable to pay their mortgages. In the future women of course will try not to get pregnant."
The crisis is not the only cause of the demographic setbacks that are in store. It should be kept in mind that few children were born in the 1990s, resulting in few girls who could become mothers before 2025: "The benefits granted in 2007-2008, just like the population experts feared, might have encouraged women who were going to have a second child anyway, but made childbirth a priority due to these benefits. This is what happens in such cases: the birthrate increases over 2-3 years before going down again." Many experts, Mr Vishnevsky points out, feared that the measures aimed at boosting the birthrate introduced in 2007 could destabilize the birth trends. All these factors could combine: the crisis, the diminishing number of reproductive-age women, and the natural postponement of childbirth in response to demographic policy measures. The coming years should see a drop in the birth ate, Anatoly Vishnevsky concludes.
Birthrates will be falling against the background of the overall unfavourable demographic situation. Russia's population is steadily shrinking, it has dropped by about 0.4% every year since the 2002 census. The annual drop increased by four times compared with the period between the 1989 and 2002 censuses, when it was 0.1%. In spite of the country's seemingly excellent financial performance, the death rate, far from slowing down, has increased: in the first half of 2008 more people died than in the first half of 2007. On the whole, the death rate exceeded the birth rate by a third in the first half of 2008, even before the crisis struck. The data as of March 4, 2009 indicate that one person dies every 15 seconds and one baby is born every 18 seconds.
Alexandra Samarina, Ada Gorbachyova