Page 9 - RusRPTAug21

2.0 Politics 2.1 Putin’s babies
Russia’s economy is expected to stagnate for the next two decades with growth stuck at 1.5%, according to recent research. There are several factors slowing growth, but the most important is the population is shrinking, as the catastrophe of the 1990s hits the demographic curve, Iikka Korhonen, chief economist at Bank of Finland Institute for Economies in Transition (BOFIT), said in a paper this month.
The irony is that dealing with Russia’s demographic problems has probably been one of the Kremlin’s biggest successes, even if it hasn't fixed the problem. Today Russia’s population is just under 148mn (144mn if you discount the Crimea). That is actually a stunningly good result. When the “dying Russia” meme appeared in around 2000 even the optimistic scenarios were for Russia’s population to shrink to around 125mn today and many saying it would fall to 75mn-100mn from 144mn in 2000.
What the Kremlin managed to do was not only stave off disaster, but thanks to an extensive Mother and Child programme Russia’s population grew for a decade. Russian President Vladimir Putin can take the credit for 4mn additional babies being added to the population since 2006 and between 15mn and 70mn Russian who are alive today that would not have been without the state’s action.
The Mother and Child reforms instituted by the Kremlin in 2006 have been a stunning success and almost entirely unacknowledged. However, it did not solve the problem. The size of the population began to decline again in 2018 and the coronacrisis has also kept migrants at home, making the problem even worse. The demographic dent put in the population pyramid by the chaos of the 90s and the collapse of life expectancies was very deep indeed. The Mother and Child programme was only going to mitigate the problem, but it was never going to solve it.
Two decades on and once again the analysts and think-tanks are worried about demographic decline and the impact it will have on the economy. Again the predictions are gloomy. The UN, which was one of the most pessimistic in 2000, predicts that Russia’s population could halve by 2100. In its “pessimistic” scenario the UN thinks the population will fall to 125mn by 2050, but in its “optimistic” scenario will stay more or less stable to arrive at 144mn by 2050.
Putin has put dealing with Russia’s demographic problem at the core of his presidency from his first day on the job and he is still working on it 20 years later. Encouraging Russians to have more babies remains a core goal of the 12 national projects and retirement ages were hiked in 2019 to help mitigate the problem. The Kremlin would also like to attract more migrants as a stop-gap measure, but from this point on all the Kremlin can do is contain the problem. It will take 20 years for the demographic dent to work its way through the system.
9 RUSSIA Country Report August 2021 www.intellinews.com