MOSCOW. (RIA Novosti political commentator Vasily Kononenko.)
Russia's population is shrinking. According to the Federal Service for State Statistics, the worst-case scenario will see just 77 million Russians left by the middle of the century, with 123 million at best.
The main cause of the nation's steady extinction is a low birth rate. In 1989 Russia's population was 147 million, but this figure began steadily decreasing in subsequent years. In the 1990s, migration compensated for 40% of natural population loss, but in recent years this has also started to dry up. Experts say that a demographic crisis is in evidence and that only higher birth rates can help the nation extricate itself.
According to Yekaterina Lakhova, chairwoman of the State Duma Committee for Women, Family and Children, birth rates are low because the state does not provide practical support for families with children. In an interview with RIA Novosti, Lakhova admitted that her latest attempt to solve this problem had ended in a fiasco. With her colleague Andrei Isayev, she prepared a draft law providing for real aid to new parents, including a one-off 20,000-ruble grant per birth and increased allowances for single mothers, of whom there are about 900,000. The government, however, turned these proposals down.
"The authorities are still unaware of the impending danger to the nation," Lakhova said.
Valery Yelizarov, director of the Population Research Center under Moscow State University, is more skeptical.
"I do not even want to ponder such long-term forecasts, because all of them are cases of 'What if... ?'," he said. "It is practically impossible to take this 'if' into account"
"Today, we can confidently say what our labor resources will be in the 2020s. Those who will reach working and reproductive age by that time have already been born. Other forecasts are highly relative," he said, adding that the population is likely to continue decreasing.
The rate of decrease depends on the counry's socio-economic situation, the state's ability to support families, and many other factors. The consequences of the 1998 economic crisis are still being felt. But if in a decade the economic situation in the country improves, incomes grow and the state takes care of birth rates, the tendency may change noticeably.
"So far, the authorities have been busy tackling urgent social problems", Yelizarov said. "However, they will have to address these problems sooner or later. The sooner they start tackling them, the less dramatic the reality will be compared with current scenarios of the disappearance of a strong Russia from the geopolitical map of the world."
