{"id":6065,"date":"2015-01-12T22:00:36","date_gmt":"2015-01-13T05:00:36","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/myfutureamerica.org\/?p=6065"},"modified":"2015-01-12T22:03:35","modified_gmt":"2015-01-13T05:03:35","slug":"russia-demographics-are-now-reasonably-healthy-birth-rate-the-highest-in-europe","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/myfutureamerica.org\/?p=6065","title":{"rendered":"Russia Demographics Are Now Reasonably Healthy. Birth Rate the Highest in Europe"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Contrary to enduring myths Russia demographic crisis is no more<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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Anatoly Karlin (Da Russophile)<\/div>\n

9 minutes ago | <\/span><\/span>70<\/span><\/span> <\/span>0<\/a><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

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This crisis talk is really boring…<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
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This article originally appeared<\/a> at Da Russophile<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n

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Nobody concerns himself overmuch\u00a0with the United Kingdom\u2019s birth rate, and its\u00a0portents for the economic and geopolitical destiny of that land. Well, some actually do, but\u00a0said concern is of the Eurabia<\/a>, not the Children of Men, variety. In contrast, the image of Russia formed after the collapse of the Soviet Union was one of a desolate wasteland where women voted with their wombs against its continued existence.<\/p>\n

This might have once\u00a0had some elements of truth to it<\/a>, but surely this view is increasingly fantastic now that\u00a0Russia\u2019s\u00a0crude birth rate, at 13.2\/1,000 in 2013 \u2013 and slated to rise even higher this year \u2013 is the<\/em> highest bar none in Europe. It is also, as of 2012<\/a>, higher than that of the US. The only<\/em>\u00a0developed countries where birth rates remain\u00a0higher than Russia\u2019s are Australia, New Zealand, and Iceland.<\/p>\n

A major cause of this\u00a0is that Russia still has\u00a0a relatively high number of women in their childbearing years, even though this indicator began to drop\u00a0precipitously from around 2010, when the effects of the post-Soviet fertility\u00a0collapse started making themselves felt. This is an inescapable structural legacy that will be making itself\u00a0felt in the form of downwards pressure on crude birth rates until well into the 2030s.<\/p>\n

This is where a concept known as the Total Fertility Rate (TFR) comes in. The TFR\u00a0measures\u00a0the expected number of children a woman will bear in her lifetime, and is calculated by summing up\u00a0age-specific fertility rates in a single year. Its\u00a0advantage is that\u00a0it is independent<\/em> of the population\u2019s age structure.<\/p>\n

After plunging to a low of 1.16 children per woman in\u00a01999 \u2013 a \u201clowest-low\u201d fertility rate that was once theorized by some demographers to be irreversible \u2013 it has since climbed to 1.71 in 2013, and on the trends observed this year until August, will rise further to the mid-to-high 1.7s in 2014.<\/p>\n

(And before you ask, no, it\u2019s not all down to Muslims<\/a>. Or even\u00a0significantly so.)<\/p>\n

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Russia is in the green<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

This map shows European TFRs as of 2013\u00a0(or 2012 in a few cases). In the late Soviet years, Russia was\u00a0deep green, but plunged into the red and deep orange during the dislocations\u00a0of the transition years.\u00a0But it has\u00a0now regained\u00a0a greenish hue.<\/p>\n

A normal country, quite similar in its TFR to Finland or the Netherlands \u2013 countries not particularly known for being in a deep demographic abyss. And considerably better than the Christian Mediterranean, the Balkans, the Baltics, the Germanic lands, and East-Central Europe.<\/p>\n

It is, in fact, remarkable that the two\u00a0countries considered to be Europe\u2019s most politically \u201cregressive\u201d by the Brussels-Atlanticist elites \u2013 that is, Russia and Belarus \u2013 have come to possess\u00a0Eastern Europe\u2019s best TFR indicators, while\u00a0star reformers such as Poland and the Balts wallow in the demographic doldrums.<\/p>\n

This must be a bitter pill to swallow for the ideologues who claimed demographic decline is a natural consequence of Putinism. Or it would be, if they ever\u00a0bothered descending from their pulpits to look at actual statistics, but they don\u2019t<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Russia performs much more poorly on measures of mortality and life expectancy. This has its roots not in Putin\u2019s age, nor even in the Soviet collapse, but in the alcoholism epidemic that began to spread throughout the Soviet Union from the 1960s.\u00a0This is when life expectancy, previously rising fast, hit a plateau at close to 70 years and then stagnated indefinitely with the occasional peak (e.g. Gorbachev\u2019s anti-alcohol campaign) and trough (the mid-1990s).<\/p>\n

In the early 2000s, it was estimated<\/a> that excessive drinking \u2013 which in Russia takes the form of concentrated vodka (if not moonshine or other substitutes)\u00a0binges,\u00a0as opposed to the\u00a0moderate daily wine drinking characteristic of Mediterranean countries that on paper drink abou as much as Russia \u2013 accounted for 32% of aggregate mortality (including 23% of CVDs, 42% of suicides, and 72% of homicides). In comparison, this figure was just 4% in Finland, by far the most \u201calcoholized\u201dof the old EU countries.<\/p>\n

But thanks to increasing wealth, changing cultural mores, increasing\u00a0state taxes on alcohol<\/a>, and advertising\u00a0restrictions, the prevalence of bingeing has been going down for the past decade. This trend is directly reflected in the mortality rate from alcohol poisoning, which peaked around 2003 and has since plummeted to levels significantly lower\u00a0than even in 1990, when Gorbachev\u2019s anti-alcohol campaign was still active.<\/p>\n

Suicide rates and homicide rates are also vastly\u00a0down, in the process making a mockery of<\/a> a large part of Michael McFaul\u2019s academic career (he wrote a huge and hugely influential Foreign Policy article arguing that<\/a> public health declined in Putin relative to Yeltsin\u2019s time).<\/p>\n

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