Russia’s Population Drain Could Open a Floodgate of Consequences

Spanning 11 time zones from the Baltic Sea to the Bering Strait, Russia has abundant reserves of oil, gas, metals and diamonds. But one precious resource is dwindling: people.

For years, demographers have been warning that Russia’s spiraling population decline will have broad ramifications for the country’s future. Now the government is scrambling to come up with ways to counter the drop.

The authors of an ambitious demographic policy expected to be adopted by the government this year hope to turn the situation around by giving couples incentives to have children and by improving the nation’s health. Politicians of all stripes have jumped into the population debate, promoting everything from a ban on abortions to a tax on childlessness.

Russia’s population has been sliding since 1993, when it numbered 148.3 million. By 2000 it was down to 145.6 million, and the government predicts it will drop below 135 million in 2016.

Experts say the country must act now to prevent an economic catastrophe.

“In the 20th century and now the 21st century, a nation’s wealth is not in the ground,” says Nicholas Eberstadt, a specialist in Russian demographics at the American Enterprise Institute in Washington.

The reason for the population decline is simple: Russians are having too few children and dying too early. But correcting those tendencies, as much a matter of culture as economics, will be anything but simple.

Russia has one of the world’s lowest birthrates--1.17 children per woman. To keep the population level, its citizens would need to have twice as many children.

Small families have long been the norm in Russia, as throughout most of Europe. But the last decade has seen the number of babies decline sharply as many couples put off having children in the face of economic instability, researchers say.

“The demographic situation depends for the most part on the economic situation in the country, on people’s confidence in tomorrow,” Labor Minister Alexander Pochinok said at a recent hearing on the crisis.

At the same time, Russians are dying much earlier than the rest of the developed world. Life expectancy is about 58.9 years for men and 72.4 years for women, according to government statistics. In contrast, life expectancy in the United States is 74.2 for men and 79.9 for women.

Health officials blame the short life expectancy on increased poverty, stress and alcoholism during Russia’s rocky transition to a free-market economy.

“The super-mortality is connected mostly to the ‘alcoholization’ of the country . . . and to smoking,” says Nikolai Gerasimenko, head of parliament’s health committee.

Alcohol--or what Eberstadt calls “the Russian pattern of drinking oneself senseless”--contributes to Russia’s high rates of cardiovascular disease and accidents, the top two killers. Officials say people frequently die of poisoning after drinking low-quality or industrial alcohol.

If the mortality situation is bad now, it is only expected to get worse.

A wave of deaths from AIDS is expected to hit within the next decade. By some estimates, Russia already has nearly a million people infected with the AIDS virus.

But mortality statistics tell only part of the story.

The nation’s poor health also accounts for a high rate of disability. Pochinok said there are 10 million disabled and chronically ill, and the same number of people become disabled as are born each year. The disabled typically do not work in Russia.

With the help of leading demographers, medical experts and sociologists, Pochinok’s ministry has drafted a policy for the next 14 years aimed at countering the population slide.

Among the goals laid out in the policy are decreasing the rate of alcoholism, smoking and drug abuse through information campaigns and health education, and improving medical facilities, especially in remote communities.

The program also aims to increase the birthrate by offering tax breaks and housing subsidies and loans for families, with bigger families eligible for bigger benefits.

Financial aid to families should also be more effectively targeted, the policy’s authors say. Currently all families are entitled to a monthly stipend, but the sum--58 rubles per child, or about $2--is so small that most parents say they find it insulting.

Economic hardship and the disappearance of Soviet-era guarantees, such as three years of paid maternity leave, have made couples who would like to have a second child think twice, many experts say.

Economic measures alone will not boost the birthrate enough to stop the decline, says Anatoly Antonov, head of the department of family sociology at Moscow State University.

Antonov says the government must change people’s values by promoting big families through the media, a solution also suggested in the draft policy.

“This is the dilemma of all Western civilizations: Why do we feel happy without having children?” Antonov says. “Give me a TV channel and I will boost the image of the family.”

Some say the ministry’s policy does not go far enough.

Vladimir Zhirinovsky, a flamboyant nationalist who is deputy speaker of the lower house of parliament, has called for a 10-year ban on abortions and a prohibition against women traveling abroad.

Few take Zhirinovsky’s ideas seriously, and his population bill was quickly voted down this year.

But some say that if real solutions are not found soon, the population decline could play on Russian insecurities about being a failed superpower. It could also fuel tension between ethnic Russians and the country’s Muslim minorities, who tend to have more children.

Antonov argues that could open the way for extremists to gain power and try to solve the crisis through repressive measures.

“If the population decline isn’t reversed . . . we will get a fascist state,” he warns.