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In 2006, Russian President Vladimir Putin directed his nation's parliament to develop a plan to revive the country's falling birthrate. In a speech to parliament on May 10, 2006, Putin called the problem of Russia's dramatically declining population, "The most acute problem of contemporary Russia." Putin himself explored the issues surrounding the low birth rate during his speech, asking "What has prevented a young family, a young woman, from making this decision? The answers are obvious: low incomes, a lack of normal housing, doubts about the level of medical services and quality education. At times, there are doubts about the ability to provide enough food."

People vote by their feet. People migrate to places where they find a safe and equitable environment for their living and their family living. They obey the direction of the country management where they found a safe place to live. This influences the geopolitics that we witness in today's world.

Once a country becomes a magnet for families to safely live and work then its language will thrive, its culture will expand and its capacity to defend itself from unfriendly forces will increase.

From the participation of Chechens in the latest military events, one might infer that the end of the Chechen wars in April 2009, when Russia ended its counter-terrorism operation and pulled out the bulk of its army, helped the Chechen families to increase population growth and belong to the Russian identity.

I heard also that tolerating religious values in Russia (such as favorable rebuilding of places of worship) have helped raise family values. But I am not an expert on Russian internal politics to estimate the success of those measures.

What measures has Russia taken to combat the declining population problem in the past 15 years?

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    Upvoted, but it might be better to ask just what were the measures. Deciding which ones were successful and which weren't may be somewhat more difficult, because it would require some alternative scenario and also apportioning contributions of each measure to this difference. I'm not ruling out such studies don't exist though.
    – Fizz
    Apr 17, 2022 at 5:39
  • Not sure if you are actually a new user or a new account of an existing user, but since it's a new user account, I'll explain my downvote. Too much of this question seems to be a desire to make a political point or points. And very little of it is an actual question. In fact, technically the question in the title is unaswerable. This is a question/answer site dedicated to capturing information which may have lasting value, rather than to promulgating political opinions which may be pertinent to daily news. If the question reads like "XYZ is great, am I right," then it shouldn't be here.
    – wrod
    Apr 18, 2022 at 22:43
  • On the other hand, if there is an actual question, it's ok to have examples which motivated it. The separation between content and context of the question should be as clear as possible. This makes the content of the question have more lasting value (even when its context becomes almost forgotten).
    – wrod
    Apr 18, 2022 at 22:44
  • @F1Krazy the last edit opens up the scope of the question quite a bit. For example, an answer which would make a substantiated case that the war's aim is to expand population, would be on-topic now.
    – wrod
    Apr 20, 2022 at 1:05

2 Answers 2

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Russia suffered a short-lived population growth collapse when the Soviet Union collapsed causing widespread economic dislocation. It briefly recovered from that trend as the society, political system, and economy stabilized, only to return to the long term trend globally of declining population growth in more developed economies once it recovered from this catastrophic short term shock.enter image description here

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Close up from 1990 to 2020 from the same source:

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Change in birth rates in Russia from 1990 to 2020:

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GDP growth in Russia from 1990 to 2020:

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(Source)

Birth rates and death rates are largely lagging indicators of economic change (most obviously, births lag about nine months from the decision to give birth), and tend to be somewhat more smooth the economic indicators.

There is not credible evidence to suggest that "measures taken inside of Russia to combat the declining population problem in the past 15 years", in particular, have been successful. The period of recover was attributable not to population growth specific policies, but due to a general return to the long term historical trend after an atypical period of disruption.

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  • The last chart is weird: it is not GDP growth chart but GDP growth acceleration chart. Red means you grow slower than the year before.
    – alamar
    Apr 18, 2022 at 21:00
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    @alamar I've included both the top and bottom of the chart now.
    – ohwilleke ♦
    Apr 18, 2022 at 21:03
  • According to worlddata.info about 2019: “The population in Russia decreased by about 71,600 inhabitants. In the same year, the death rate was 13.3 per 1000 people (~ 1,922,000 deaths) and the birth rate was 9.8 per 1000 people (~ 1,416,000 births). As a result, around 434,400 inhabitants have to be added by migration from other countries.” worlddata.info/europe/russia/populationgrowth.php 434K migrants in one year might be a credible evidence of some successful change in policy that attracted that high number of migrants to Russia.
    – user42968
    Apr 18, 2022 at 21:30
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    @Phillip I don't disagree, but such as change would not be a change targeted at reversing falling birth rates of the kind the OP is asking about.
    – ohwilleke ♦
    Apr 18, 2022 at 21:34
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    @ohwilleke it's the same cause and effect. Hopelessness meant delaying starting of families (hence collapsed birth rates). But earlier deaths created a short-lived spike in death rates. While delayed starting of families meant a demographic hole. Not having toddlers in the 90's, meant not having teenagers in 2000's, not having people in their 20's in the 201x, etc. So the effect of it was not just a short downward spike, but a more long-term problem.
    – wrod
    Apr 18, 2022 at 23:03
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This is a very multi-faceted question so I will respond with a multiple facts weakly linked to each other.

  • Russia has tried to bolster reproductive ratio within the country with limited success - number of birhs climbed at first but then declined back, driven mostly by population pyramid but also by stagnating economy.

  • It is very hard to actually know how many people live inside Russia, for two reasons: first, Russia is very bad at tracking emigrants, most of whom retain Russian citizenship and thus still counted towards population numbers, and second, Russia is very bad at tracking immigrants, most of whom just move in and out of country without getting citizenship even if they live in Russia permanently, therefore not counted towards population numbers.

  • In many ways, as of early 2022 Russia's large cities are a magnet for people in most of ex-USSR since the quality of life is higher and opportunities are relatively plentiful, while it's comparatively easy to move there.

  • For Russians within Russia, the new magnets are cities in the South, mostly Krasnodar region, which has better weather and warm sea.

  • It is not obvious that making a country desirable for families solves the population problem: you really need to integrate newcomers and make them share the common culture with all its quirks and idiosyncrasies. Too early to say if this would be a success.

  • Russia also has plenty of "depressive" regions that people are leaving behind.

  • EDIT: There are also regions with ethnic tensions, these are usually "national republics" (such as Tuva or Dagestan), they experience safety concerns, economic malaise and subsequent internal migration. This is not a property of all "national republics" - some of those (such as Tatarstan and Bashkiria) are well off and probably net migration positive.

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  • How would you characterize family bonds in Russian culture? (Strong, weak?) Does family unification and the extended family have impact on patterns of mobility to/from Russia and thereby contribute to the population growth/decline? Are patterns of mobility determined solely based on search for income or based on safety of family life; e.g., children can walk safely down the streets, and availability of elder’s care?
    – user42968
    Apr 18, 2022 at 13:30
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    That's a lot of questions and I don't know answers to some of them. I will answer the last one: All three patterns are present, economic migration (moving to Moscow from an economically declining city such as Ivanovo), safety-concerned migration (moving to Irkutsk from ethnic tensions such as in Kyzyl) and climatic migration (moving to Krasnodar from brutal weather of Komsomolsk-na-Amure)
    – alamar
    Apr 18, 2022 at 13:47

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