Fertility, Nuptiality, and Family Planning in Russia: Problems and Prospects
The dramatic 1988-1996 fertility decline and negative rate of natural increase in Russia after 1992 shocked public officials and many others around the world. As a result, these and other demographic phenomena have become the foci of unprecedented attention by politicians, the mass media, professionals, and dilettantes. Consequently, there are numerous population forecasts and various predictions, most of which predict and warn of depopulation-caused apocalypses and drastic deterioration of the nation's genetic pool. At the behest of Communists, self-proclaimed national patriots, and church fundamentalists, the Russian Duma is earnestly discussing legislation related to the "extraordinary demographic situation in the country." Among proposed measures "to salvage the nation" are laws to restrict abortion rights, to legally oblige married couples to deliver at least one child, to provide exorbitant benefits for giving birth to a second and third child, to ban family-planning associations, to ban advertisement of contraceptives, and to promote many other ideas, some of which have been tried in Italy, Spain, Germany, and the USSR during the times of Mussolini, Franco, Hitler, and Stalin. Amid this hullabaloo, professional judgments of the few and relatively quiet specialists who are engaged in collecting and analyzing population statistics are barely audible. I have expressed my view on long-term trends in the dynamics of Russian fertility and nuptiality and their short-term oscillations. I believe that adopting patterns of "Western" reproductive and matrimonial behavior in the 1990s stands behind life-cycle changes of advanced social groups in Russia. One cannot rule out that a new economic reality will also spur transition to a new fertility pattern in Russia. The responsibility for the consequences of marriage and its "economics" will undoubtedly grow and inevitably lead to an increase in the age of first marriage and of first childbirth. As a result, a new fertility pattern may take shape even sooner than current evolutionary change.