Russian population decline worsens
Date: Thursday, January 24, 2002 10:50:21 PM EST
MOSCOW, Jan. 24 (UPI) -- Russia's population shrank by a startling 781,800 people, or 0.5 percent, during the first 11 months of last year, falling to 144 million, the State Statistics Committee said Thursday.
Almost twice as many deaths as births were recorded last year, with slightly more than 2 million people dying while only 1.2 million Russians were born.
Demographers say Russia's population began shrinking at the end of the 1980's, but the process has accelerated as living standards have plunged, crime has soared and life expectancy dropped after the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991 and the subsequent turmoil and economic collapse in 1998 took their toll.
Years of economic uncertainty in Russia and a decaying national health-care system have caused many couples to reconsider having children, further cutting the birth rate.
Rampant alcoholism and growing consumption of tobacco, together with an unhealthy diet of the average Russian who consumes more starch and fat and less vitamins, have contributed to the decline in life expectancy, which continues to fall and is 59 years for men. Russian women, meanwhile, can on average expect to live to 72.
The government is beginning to heed the warnings of demographers that, at current rates, Russia's population will shrink by some 10 million over the next 15 years and will continue declining for at least half a century.
It has now been accepted that the sharp drop in the population causes a potential security risk to the country as the decline is combined with migration of Russian citizens from sparsely populated Siberian and Far East regions to central Russia.
A rising tide of illegal immigrants from China who are settling in the Russian Far East threatens to outnumber Russians eventually in some areas, causing alarm bells to ring in the Kremlin.
It seems the government has decided the time to act is now, with programs to encourage births and improve the underfunded health system now under way. In recent weeks, President Vladimir Putin has demanded that local authorities deal with the problem of homeless children, whose numbers have swelled to well over a million -- something unseen even during the worst days of World War II.
Officials in Moscow are increasingly concerned by the growing AIDS epidemic and the spread of drugs among Russia's youth. Additional federal funds for a widespread anti-drug program are expected to be committed in the near future.
On Thursday, Putin proposed pardoning some 20,000 female convicts who are mothers, releasing them from detention centers and jails to care for their children under the terms of a special amnesty, provided they were not convicted for murder or terrorism.
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