AFP: "Putin trumpets first Russia population growth since 1995"
MOSCOW (AFP) - Russia's population grew this year for the first time since 1995, Prime Minister Vladimir Putin said Wednesday, after years of precipitous decline following the collapse of the Soviet Union.
"We can say with a high degree of confidence that Russia will register a growth in population for the first time since 1995," Putin said at an end-of-year government meeting broadcast on state television.
The powerful prime minister said official statistics to be released later would bear this fact out and his spokesman, Dmitry Peskov, confirmed that Putin was referring to 2009 for the change in the trend.
In eight years as president prior to becoming prime minister in 2008, Putin frequently lamented the steady and sharp drop in Russia's population since the 1991 Soviet collapse, describing it in 2006 as the country's biggest problem.
That decline has been due in large measure to emigration from Russia but has also been attributed to a number of other factors including high rates of alcoholism, high stress and low public health standards.
In his annual presidential address to the nation in 2006, Putin laid out a three-pronged strategy for boosting the Russian population.
He said the plan focused on measures to extend Russia's notoriously low life expectancy, boost the birth rate and implement a more "efficient" migration policy.
Putin also announced Wednesday that the average Russian life expectancy was expected to have increased in 2009 to "almost 69 years."
If confirmed by official demographic data, this would represent a significant increase by comparison with 2008 when, according to Health Minister Tatyana Golikova, the average Russian life expectancy was 67.8 years.
Peskov told AFP that the anticipated Russian population growth this year was of only around 20,000 people, describing this as a "symbolic" amount.
He said the growth was due to a combination of increased migration to Russia and a drop in the disparity between births and deaths, even if the latter still exceeded the former by a few thousand.
As president, Putin pushed legislation offering significant tax incentives and one-off financial payments to families who had a first child or one additional child.
Last year, President Dmitry Medvedev reintroduced the Soviet tradition of awarding the parents of many children with medals of "parental glory."
Anatoly Vishnevsky, director of the Institute of Demography at the Higher School of Economics, acknowledged that government policies had boosted the birth rate, but predicted the population growth would be "temporary."
"The higher birth rate is due to two things: A higher number of young women and government measures to stimulate the birth rate that were put in effect in 2007," Vishnevsky said.
"But in around two years, the numbers of youths -- including young women -- will start to decline. This is the result of the decline in births in the 1990s due to the state of the country" following the Soviet collapse.
In August, Russia saw its first month of population growth in 15 years, Golikova said, with the birth rate increasing by around 1,000.
According to figures published in November by the Federal Agency for State Statistics, Russia's population stood at 141.9 million.
by Anna Malpas Anna Malpas
