A report by Russian experts under UNDP auspices makes grim reading on Russia’s demographic problems.
Basically, Russia has a uniquely dire set of trends combining to reduce fertility rates and increase mortality rates, leading to a notably shrinking – and ageing -population:
- demographic ripples from the massive loss of men in WW2
- low respect for human life
- absurdly cheap cigarettes and alcohol
- high abortion rates
- high traffic accident and murder and suicide rates (especially among younger men)
- popular hostility to immigration from elsewhere in the former Soviet Union
- surging AIDS/HIV numbers (1000 reported cases in 1997, over 400,000 cases in 2007)
- bad urban pollution
- and many others
It is fashionable in some quarters to blame these phenomena on allegedly capitalist ‘shock therapy’ following the collapse of the Soviet Union. But this careful analysis shows that the various effects arising from those changes (high unemployment, more cars, more ‘marginalisation’) have merely accentuated earlier trends which developed because of negative communist-era policies and attitudes.
The overall – and staggering – result?
Russia is one of the few countries in the world where life expectancy has decreased in comparison to 1960s levels.
Not enough babies being born, too many unnecessary deaths (especially among younger men), ‘social’ illnesses killing off millions of people each year.
The authors propose various measures aimed at changing policies and attitudes but seemingly do not hold out much hope that a significant difference can be made.
Above all there seem to be simply too few young men and women around in Russia now to have children on the scale needed to change birth rates for the better, even if those young people were minded to have families and children on a notably higher scale than now.
Thus Russia appears to be on track to have something like ‘only’ 100 million people in forty years’ time.
Not that Europe has anything to be smug about:
Unfortunately, the assumption of family duties by the state allows people to free ride on the fertility of others—which they seem to be trying to do in massive numbers. As we’ve mentioned before, a society where everyone tries to free ride on everyone else is headed for disaster. Europe’s safety nets, or at least the pension systems, may contain the seeds of their own destruction.
Fascinating to see how Cause and Effect relentlessly work their way down the decades.
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