Russia loses a million people in historic population fall

Russia's population declined by more than one million people in 2021, the statistics agency Rosstat reported Friday, a historic drop not seen since the collapse of the Soviet Union. Ongoing demographic woes have been exacerbated by the pandemic with Rosstat figures showing more than 660,000 had died with coronavirus since health officials recorded the first case in the country. The new figures continue a downward trend from the previous year when Russia's population fell by more than half a million. The Covid-related fatalities figures published monthly by Rosstat are far higher than death figures released by a separate government website, which is dedicated to tracking the pandemic in the country. Those government website figures only take into account fatalities where the virus was established as the primary cause of death after an autopsy and shows just 329,443 total fatalities.

The pandemic death toll exacerbates the demographic crisis, linked to low birth rates and a short life expectancy, that Russia has faced for the past 30 years. Birth rates have been falling because the generation now becoming parents were born in the 1990s, when the birth rate plunged due to economic uncertainties after the collapse of the Soviet Union. The number of births per woman stands at around 1.5, well short of the minimum of 2.1 necessary to renew the population.  Russia also has one of the oldest populations in the world with an average age of 40.3 years. Further contributing to Russia’s population decline is a low level of immigration.

Russia's shrinking population has been at the top of President Vladimir Putin's domestic agenda since he came to power over two decades ago. Putin frequently encourages Russians to have more children and live a healthier lifestyle to improve life expectancy. The government has introduced a number of financial incentives for parents with more than one child, such as cash bonuses and favourable mortgage rates. Population growth and demographics have long been a problem for Russia, as a decade ago the nation was losing 1 million people a year. Further in the future, it is expected that the population will continue to decline slowly, getting down to 140 million by 2030, and 136 million by 2040."The demographic crisis is definitely a failure of the state's policies," said Sergei Zakharov, a demography expert at the Higher School of Economics based in Moscow. 

Living standards in Russia have continuously deteriorated since 2014, with the economy strained by repeated Western sanctions, dependence on the oil and gas sector and widespread corruption. The low birth rate is connected to widespread "uncertainty about the future"."People haven't stopped buying and their income and savings have reduced," Stepan Goncharov of the independent Levada Centre pollster said.