MOSCOW: Russia’s population has declined by more than a million people in 2021, the Rosstat statistics agency reported Friday, a historic decline not seen since the collapse of the Soviet Union.
Ongoing demographic problems have been exacerbated by the pandemic, with Rosstat figures showing more than 660,000 had died from the coronavirus since health officials registered the first case in the country.
The new numbers continue a downward trend from the previous year, when the Russian population fell by more than half a million.
The Covid-related death toll published Friday by Rosstat is more than double that of a government website tracking the pandemic showing 329,443 total fatalities.
Russia has struggled to contain the pandemic due to a slow vaccination campaign coupled with limited restrictive measures and rampant non-compliance with wearing masks in public places.
The pandemic death toll exacerbates the demographic crisis, linked to low birth rates and short life expectancy, that Russia has faced for the past 30 years.
The birth rate has fallen because the generation now becoming parents was born in the 1990s, when the birth rate fell due to economic uncertainties after the collapse of the Soviet Union.
The number of births per woman is around 1.5, well below the minimum of 2.1 needed to renew the population.
– Economic concerns –
Russia’s shrinking population has been at the top of President Vladimir Putin’s domestic agenda since he came to power more than two decades ago.
In speeches to the nation, Putin regularly encourages Russians to have more children and lead healthier lifestyles to improve life expectancy.
The government has introduced a number of financial incentives for parents with more than one child, such as cash bonuses and favorable mortgage rates.
At his annual press conference last December, Putin stressed that 146 million people are not enough for the country from a “geopolitical standpoint” and that labor shortages are emerging.
He added that it is important to show that it is a “joy to have children” and that there is “no greater happiness in life and in the world”.
“The demographic crisis is definitely a failure of state policy,” said Sergei Zakharov, a demographics expert at Moscow’s Higher School of Economics.
He told AFP that measures to increase the birth rate encourage families to have children earlier, but do not change the total number of children they want.
He said the government’s influence on birth rates is “limited” and shifting births to an earlier period will result in a “demographic divide” in the future.
According to Stepan Goncharov of the independent Levada Center survey, the low birth rate is linked to widespread “uncertainty about the future.”
Living standards in Russia have deteriorated continuously since 2014, with the economy under pressure from repeated Western sanctions, reliance on the oil and gas sector and widespread corruption.
“People have not stopped buying and their income and savings have decreased,” Goncharov said.
According to last year’s survey by recruitment website SuperJob, 43 percent of Russians have no savings.
“People don’t put money aside and don’t plan for the future of the family,” Goncharov added.
