4/4/19
Every third region in Russia saw a spike in mortality rates in 2018, according to health officials, contributing to the country's first population decline in a decade and highlighting the challenges of fending off a protracted demographic crisis. Russia's population fell last year by 87,000 people, to less than 147 million, putting a dent in the government's efforts to overcome the legacy of a demographic crisis that emerged in the 1990s. Alcohol has been a traditional cause of high mortality rates among Russian men, and the past 10 years have seen the longest anti-alcohol campaign in Russian history, with measures including a ban on advertising hard alcohol and plans to halve overall consumption by 2020. According to reports prepared for a recent Federation Council round-table on social policy, free Russian men are likely to die earlier than those in prison. Alcohol is seen as the culprit. "This raises questions about the quality of freedom" in Russia, Interfax cited the reports as concluding. The Russian government has placed major emphasis on the demographic issue. From the mid-1960s to the late 1980s, the Russian population rose steadily, but the collapse of the Soviet Union ushered in a population crisis compounded by wage arrears, mass unemployment, and alcohol abuse.
Since his assumption of power in 2000, President Vladimir Putin has made reversing the trend and stimulating population growth one of his signature policies. In May 2018, shortly after his inauguration for a fourth presidential term, Putin signed a decree enumerating the main priorities for his government until 2024 and the goals it should accomplish. Ensuring stable natural population growth was the first point on the list. The current downturn is in part connected with a drop in the number of women of child-bearing age, Golikova said -- those born during the precipitous slump of the 1990s. The first five months of 2018 witnessed 28 percent fewer births than the equivalent period in 2017, according to figures from state statistics agency Rosstat. The Russian government has sought to encourage reproduction by providing financial incentives to women as part of its so-called maternity capital program, which currently provides mothers with a subsidy of around 453,000 rubles ($7,000) to help support their second child. In February, Putin proposed expanding the program by giving mortgage subsidies to women who have three or more children. And there are indications more will be done. In her television appearance, Golikova said talks were under way to also begin providing such support for the first child as part of a broader demographic campaign aimed at the "preservation of the Russian nation."
