A demographic tragedy currently unfolding in Russia which in the past three years has lost about 2 million more people than it would have lost in “normal” conditions as a result of wars, disease and flight.

Life expectancy for 15-year-old boys has been reduced by about five years, to the same level as in Haiti. The number of Russians born in April 2022 was no higher than during the months of Nazi occupation. And because so many men of military age are either dead or in exile, there are at least 10 million more women than men.

The war, notes The Economist, is not the only and not the main cause of the demographic problem, but a factor in its aggravation.

According to Western estimates, between 175,000 and 200,000 Russian soldiers have been killed or wounded on the Ukrainian front in the past year – although Russian casualties are smaller – while half a million to a million, mostly young, educated people, have chosen to flee abroad in order to avoid being called. , their.

dramatic predictions

The roots of today’s crisis go deeper and go back three decades. In 1994, the country’s population peaked at 149 million. Since then, a zigzag population decline has followed. According to the UN, 145 million citizens lived in the country in 2021, not counting the 2.5 million inhabitants of Crimea annexed by Russia in 2014, which predicts that, if this trend continues, in fifty years from todayof the entire population of Russia will be reduced to 120 million. If this is true, then Russia would become the 15th largest country in the world in terms of population – up from 6th in 1995.

As Aleksey Raksha, an independent demographer working for the country’s state statistics agency, points out, the peacetime birth rate in April 2022 was the lowest since the 18th century, a clear indication of a chronic problem.

pandemic factor

Population decline is not unique to Russia, as most post-communist countries have seen declines, although not to the same extent.

The country’s population in 2020 and 21 combined fell by 1.3 million, with deaths exceeding births by 1.7, according to the National Statistics Office. millions.

The fall began long before the war and also reflects the devastating effects of the coronavirus pandemic in the country. Covid has claimed 388,091 lives in Russia, according to official counts, a small number relative to its population and compared to larger countries. The Economist estimates that the total excess deaths from 2020 to 2023 range from 1.2 million to 1.6 million, placing the country second in the world after India in terms of death toll.

And if we add to the victims of the war the death rate from the pandemic, then between 2020 and 2023 Russia lost from 1.9 to 2.8 million people, which exceeds the usual demographic decline.

What does this mean for the future of the country?

Although demographics are reversible, as Russia itself proved in the middle of the last decade, lowering the number of Russians of draft age (raising the threshold from 18-27 to 21-30) will make the regular spring draft, starting in April, tougher. At the same time, it will put pressure on youth in non-Russian regions such as Dagestan (where protests have already begun) and potentially thwart plans to increase the size of the military by 350,000 over the next three years.

Apart from the consequences for the military, Russia may not be able to achieve what allows other countries to be rich and old, namely a high and growing level of education…

The country is a curious mix of Third World mortality and advanced education, says Nicholas Eberstadt, a demographer at the American Enterprise Institute in Washington. Russia has some of the highest education rates in the world among people over 25. However, the flight of families or highly educated youth from the country is changing this. advantage.

Source: The Economist