Page 19 - RusRPTFeb20

2.8 ​Polls & Sociology
In a Levada Center poll conducted before Putin’s Federal Assembly speech, 63% of Russians said they expect 2020 to be better than the previous year. ​This is the highest figure since Putin came to power. The rise in optimism has been constant since hitting an all-time low of 46% in 2016. 57% of respondents nevertheless expect 2020 to be a tense year for the Russian economy — an 8% drop from last year, but a high figure nevertheless.
Russia’s population declined for a second year in a row in 2019, ​Rosstat’s preliminary estimate reveals. An increase in migration failed to make up for the dwindling natural population, which fell by 286,000 in the first 11 months of 2019. On the whole, Russia’s population dropped almost 36,000—an improvement from the nearly 100,000-person decline in 2018. Rosstat’s demographic forecast predicts that Russia’s natural population will decline at an increasing rate in the coming years, hitting a peak of -583,500 people in 2026. During this time, the influx of migrants won’t cover even half of the natural population decline. These figures put Putin’s fixation on demographics in context. Just today, he instructed the government to extend maternity capital payments to 2026, a key social promise of his Federal Assembly address. Per Putin’s instructions, mothers will receive nearly RUB470,000 ($7,500) for the birth of their first child, and RUB150,000 ($2,400) for the birth of their second. The Kremlin hopes that these initiatives will help boost the declining birth rate, which Rosstat projects will fall to 1.42 children per mother (from 1.5 today) by 2025.
More than one in two Russians (51%) are secure about their future, ​which is 18 percentage points higher than a survey conducted two decades ago, a poll carried out by the All-Russia Public Opinion Research Center indicates. "Over the past 20 years, Russians have grown more confident about their future. In 2000, one in three respondents (33%) said they felt secure, yet now it is one in two (51%)," the center said in a statement. According to the pollster, 57% of those surveyed said they could imagine the future of their family in a year or more, while 20 years ago, most Russians (69%) were unable to fathom their future and the future of their families for a period of more than a few months. Based on the poll’s results, just like two decades ago, many Russians (41%) consider living by the standards of their community to be their major life goal. However, the rate of those who would like to live better than most people in their neighborhood has grown to 23% from 11% in 1999. Another 11% seek to achieve the living standards of an average family in Europe and the United States, while six percent said they sought an even better standard of living than in the West.
Belarus President Aleksandr Lukashenko is the most popular foreign leader among Russians​, Director General of the Russian Public Opinion Research Center (VCIOM) Valery Fyodorov told the Izvestia newspaper. The top spot in the ranking was previously shared by the Belarusian leader and former president of Kazakhstan Nursultan Nazarbayev. “Nursultan Nazarbayev is out of the spotlight now. However Aleksandr Lukashenko is still in the limelight,” Fyodorov said. Russians perceive the Belarusian president as a great manager who maintains order in the country.
19​ RUSSIA Country Report​ February 2020 ​ ​www.intellinews.com