Russia faces a shrinking and aging population and tries restrictive laws to combat it
For a quarter of a century, President Vladimir Putin He faced the specter of Russia’s shrinking and aging population.
A year ago, in 1999 came to power, The number of babies born in Russia has fallen to the lowest level on record. In 2005, Putin said that demographic problems should be solved by maintaining “social and economic stability”.
He said the issue was still “plaguing” the country in 2019.
On Thursday, he told a Kremlin demographic conference that increasing births was “very important” for Russia.
Putin has launched initiatives to encourage people to have more children, from free school meals for large families to awarding Soviet-style “hero-mother” medals to women with 10 or more children.
“Many of our grandmothers and great-grandmothers had seven, eight or even more children,” Putin said in 2023. “Let’s preserve and revive these wonderful traditions. Having many children and having a large family should become the norm.”
At first, births in Russia increased with economic prosperity; It increased from 1.21 million babies born in 1999 to 1.94 million in 2015.
But these hard-earned gains are collapsing in an environment of financial uncertainty. war in Ukraine, Immigration of young men and opposition to immigration.
Russia’s population fell from 147.6 million in 1990, the year before the collapse of the USSR, to 146.1 million this year, according to Russia’s Federal Statistics Service. Since the illegal annexation of Crimea in 2014, it has included in its data the peninsula’s population of approximately 2 million, as well as births and deaths there.
The population is also significantly older. In 1990, 21.1 percent were 55 or older, according to government data. In 2024, this figure was 30 percent.
The number of births has fallen each year since the peak in 2015, with deaths now outpacing births. Last year alone there were 1.22 million live births; This number is only slightly above the 1999 low. Demographer Alexei Raksha reported that the number of babies born in Russia in February 2025 was the lowest monthly figure in more than two centuries.
Russia is trying new restrictions to halt decline and enshrine in law what it calls “traditional family values” prohibiting the promotion of abortion and “childless ideology” and bans all LGBTQ+ activism.
Russian feminist academic Sasha Talaver said authorities believed such values were a “magic wand” to solve demographic problems.
In the government’s view, women can be financially independent, but they must be “very excited and willing to take on this additional reproductive work in the name of patriotism and the power of Russia,” he said.
Challenging demographic history
In Russia, as in much of the West, declining births are often linked to economic turmoil. Living in cramped apartments, unable to buy their own home, or fearful for their jobs, young couples often lack the confidence to raise children.
But Russia has a difficult demographic history.
Approximately 27 million Soviet citizens Died in World War IIsignificantly reducing the male population.
While the country began to recover, the Soviet Union collapsed and births declined again.
Jenny Mathers of Aberystwyth University in Wales said the number of Russian women in their 20s and early 30s was small and authorities were “desperate to have as many babies as possible from a much smaller number of women.”
Although Russia does not say how many soldiers were killed in Ukraine, Western estimates put the death toll in the hundreds of thousands. When the war begins, many young Russians moved abroad — some for ideological reasons, such as to escape repression of dissidents, or to avoid military service.
“In a pool of fewer potential mothers, you have a pool of much fewer potential fathers,” Mathers said. This, he said, is a particular problem for Putin, who has long linked population and national security.
Some family-friendly initiatives are popular, such as cash certificates for parents’ retirement, education or subsidized mortgages.
Others, such as one-time payments of about $1,200 for pregnant teens in some areas, are controversial. Authorities say they are intended to support vulnerable mothers, but critics say they encourage such pregnancies.
Still other programs seem mostly symbolic. Since 2022, Russia has held public holidays, such as the Day of Family, Love and Fidelity in July, and Pregnant Women’s Day, celebrated on April 7 and October 7.
Last year, Russia’s fertility rate (the average number of children born per woman) was 1.4, state media reported. This is well below the replacement rate of 2.1 for the population and slightly lower than the 1.6 figure announced by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in the United States.
encouraging abortion
While some regions have laws making it illegal to “promote abortion”, national legislation in 2024 outlawed this Promotion of “childless propaganda”. The wording in such initiatives is often vague, leaving them open to interpretation; however, this change was enough to lead the producers of the reality show “16 and Pregnant” to change the show’s name to “16 Year Old Mom.”
For many women, these measures make already sensitive conversations even more fraught. A 29-year-old woman who decided not to have children told The Associated Press that she saw a gynecologist at a private Moscow clinic rather than a public clinic to avoid uncomfortable questions.
“Whether I’m planning to have children, whether I’m planning to have children, I’m never asked about that,” she said, speaking on condition of anonymity for fear of repercussions. He said it was a “totally different story” at state-run clinics.
Increasing number of laws limiting access to abortion. Although the procedure remains legal and widely available, many private clinics no longer offer abortion services. The new legislation also restricted the sale of abortion-inducing pills; This move also affects some emergency contraceptives.
Women are encouraged to go to public clinics, where wait times are longer and some clinics refuse to perform abortions on certain days. After patients complete mandatory counseling and mandatory waiting periods of 48 hours to a week, they face the risk of exceeding the time limit for legal abortion.
Abortions have steadily decreased under these laws, although experts say the number of procedures is already falling. Yet there has been no corresponding increase in births, and activists believe restricting abortion will only harm the health of women and children.
“The only result you will get from this will be illegal abortion. This means more deaths: more child deaths and more women’s deaths,” says Russian journalist and feminist activist Zalina Marshenkulova.
He sees the new government’s restrictions as oppression for oppression’s sake. “They’re just there to ban, to block any voice of freedom,” he told the AP.
Blocking immigration
Russia can increase its population by allowing more immigrants, which the Kremlin is unlikely to embrace.
Russian officials have recently Inflamed anti-immigrant sentimentIt tracks their movements, restricts their employment, and denies their children’s right to education. Central Asians who traditionally travel to Russia for business are looking elsewhere, hoping to avoid increasing discrimination and economic uncertainty.
As the war in Ukraine continues, Moscow may promise financial rewards to prospective parents, but it cannot provide the stability needed to gamble on the future.
Mathers said it’s not the time to have children if people have no confidence in the future, adding: “A big open-ended war doesn’t really encourage people to think positively about the future.”
The 29-year-old woman, who prefers not to have children, agrees.
“The happiest and healthiest child is born only in a family with healthy, happy parents,” he said.
