Russia faces depopulation crisis

By Vladimir Radyuhin

MOSCOW, MARCH 20. Russia faces the threat of depopulation in the coming century, with experts predicting a catastrophic 20-million drop in its populace by mid-century.

If the current discrepancy between birth and death rates persists, Russia's 145.5-million population could lose 8 million by 2016 and 20 million by 2050, according to a senior Kremlin security official. Last year, this country saw its sharpest ever decline in population in peace time, with the number of Russians falling by 784,000.

The falling democratic indicators pose a serious threat to the security, said Mr. Sergei Ivanov, secretary to the Security Council, a top advisory body to the Russian President. He told a meeting of senior health officials in Moscow last week that the declining birth rates were leading to a shortage of army draftees, which undermined the defence capability.

Russia's population has been steadily declining since 1992, the year when the Government of Mr. Boris Yeltsin launched its destructive pro-market reforms. In the past eight years, the Russian population has shrunk by 2.8 million, or almost two per cent. The fall would have been twice as big had it not been for about three million immigrants to Russia from former Soviet republics.

Experts attribute the falling population to declining births and rising mortality rates, resulting from a crisis in public health and widespread alcoholism, as people fail to cope with the stress and dislocations from the fall of communism. Since 1990, the birth rate in Russia has fallen by 60 per cent, while the death rate has grown.

For a country's population to remain stable, every woman should give birth to at least two children. Bearing in mind the possibility of early deaths, the cumulative birth rate should be not less than 2.1. However, in Russia, the birth rate currently stands at 1.28, its all time low. Should this trend persist, the population will be halved within 45 years.

``Russia is on the verge of a demographic crisis because we don't have very many children being born,'' Mr. Valentin Pokrovsky, the head of the Russian Academy of Medical Sciences, said in a recent interview. ``If this trend does not change in 15 to 20 years, it will be very difficult for the country, because for each working person, there will be one or two people who cannot work,'' he said.

The falling population will strain the ability just to maintain economic output at its current level, experts said. There is also a danger that Russia's sparsely populated regions of the Far East will be taken over by immigrants from China and Korea. In some villages along Russia's long border with those two countries, illegal immigrants already account for up to 70 per cent of the local population.

Interestingly, at the time of the first population census in Russia 100 years ago, experts assumed that about 400 million people will live in Russia toward the end of the 20th century.

Send this article to Friends by E-Mail

Section  : International
Previous : 'Water management needs new approaches'