Demographer Krupnov explained the extinction of Russia: one and a half children for two parents

We talk about the demographic hole that Russia has fallen into and ways to get out of it with the famous demographic politician Yuri Krupnov.

According to a study conducted by the Government of the Russian Federation, the country is divided into 8 zones. In terms of demographics, things are best in the republics of the North Caucasus and in the Siberian regions: Altai, Tyva, Khakassia, Buryatia and Yakutia. And the zone of the so-called demographic winter included 28 regions of the Volga region, Central and North-Western Russia. Here the situation with the birth rate is critical and urgent. In the most problematic areas, three subjects were selected: Novgorod, Penza and Tambov regions. As a result of the pilot project, which will last until December 31, 2024, the authorities intend to improve the demographics by creating a favorable living environment in these regions.

— Yuri Vasilyevich, what results can be expected from these pilot projects?

— The positive thing is that the regions with the most difficult demographic situation have been identified and the goals of changing the situation have been declared. But given the fact that there is no general understanding of demography in society, it is not clear how this can be done. While the pilot project is fairly confidential information, there are no methodological recommendations. Although, in my opinion, everything should be very simple: identify the reasons for the decline in demographic indicators. Next, it is necessary to outline the strategic idea: due to which the low values ​​will increase, and also indicate the deadlines and targets that we must reach. If there is no such information, this is a conversation about nothing. I can’t yet imagine what creative things the government will offer for these regions.

Either a hole or a ditch…

— Apparently, you are skeptical. Why?

— Demography is an endless story; you can talk for a long time about the percentages of birth and death rates. However, from a practical point of view, it can be argued that Russia has been dying out for several decades. By the end of the century, about half of us will remain, the UN, the CIA and other organizations with powerful analytical services agree with this. But our government has not yet taken radical measures. Extinction is stable, the sinusoid is either a hole or a ditch. Today we are in a hole, since the age of childbearing includes grown up girls who were born in the 90s of the last century, during the previous hole. There are simply few of them.

In the early 2030s, the country will see a slight increase in the birth rate; there will be approximately 30% more women giving birth. Let’s start shouting that the crisis is over, that we have passed the “red zone” thanks to timely measures taken.

But the fertility sine wave is damped. The dips and holes are deeper, and the bumps and splashes are lower.

— If everything is so bad, what about the workforce, which is already in short supply today? This periodically raises the question in society: will the retirement age for Russians be raised again?

— The shortage of personnel and the “oversupply” of pensioners is an obvious consequence of the extinction of the country. We see a war between companies for personnel. Thanks to the increase in the retirement age, formally by 10 years, the number of the working-age population (but, don’t forget, older, older people) will be approximately the same. But then we will have to raise this bar again! So, will we catch up with the retirement age to 100? And this is only one negative consequence of our extinction. But what destroys society, first of all, is extinction itself, which seems to be the norm of existence. The collapse of the family and the entire social fabric destroys society. Woe to the dying!..

– Aren’t you exaggerating? Demographic holes in the country’s history appear and disappear periodically. Is the current pit worse, more dangerous than the previous ones?

– No worse and no better, it simply consolidates the steady trend of Russians dying out. Time passes, and negative trends are only intensifying. As a result, the passing generations are not compensated, since on average we have one and a half children per family. Mom and dad will go to another world, and instead of the two of them, one and a half people will remain. If the situation does not change, by the end of the century there will be approximately 70–80 million left in Russia.

— Is this your personal forecast?

– Not mine. Once again, these are UN data. To reach simple reproduction of the population, it is necessary for a family to have not even 2 children, but 2.15, because not everyone will give birth. And here, as I already said, in fact it’s 1.5. And this is still a good indicator, since everything is going towards its reduction. Meanwhile, taking into account many years of decline in the birth rate, we generally need 2.5 children per family.

— When did this process of population reduction begin in our country?

— Simple demographic reproduction stopped in the country back in the days of the RSFSR, in 1964. And in open form – during the time of Gaidar’s reforms, in the 90s of the last century. The collapse in the birth rate was colossal, as was the increase in mortality.

“But now the government is doing something!” Maternity capital, indexation of child benefits, a pilot project on demography has been launched in three regions…

– That’s right: something. But from the point of view of the result, these measures make virtually no sense. Yes, we are increasing individual benefits for children, but for this you need to become a needy family. Thanks to digitalization, there is no need to write applications or go to social security and wait in line. Everything is automatic, convenient. But this has nothing to do with demographics. A young family certainly needs maternity capital; families with children are monstrously underfunded. However, it did not increase the birth rate. It stimulates the postponement of the child’s birth to an earlier date. Those parents who were planning a second child had one, say, not 5 years after the first, but 3 years later. And the third child in the family will never appear. Those who were going to have two children, they gave birth to two. But on average, since 2007, when maternity capital began to be paid out, there have, alas, been a noticeable increase in children in Russia.

— Maybe we can take advantage of global experience? At one time, Germany, France and other Western European countries replenished their population due to migrants. Russia has a huge reserve – the CIS countries…

“The path is ineffective, and besides, it leads to elementary ethno-demographic replacement of the indigenous population. At the same time, the situation will not improve, this is an illusion; newcomers very quickly begin to acquire the habits of native citizens in terms of birth rates.

Cult of fathers

— You say that revolutionary measures are needed. Which ones exactly do you offer?

– Look, we have 1.5 children in the family, but we need 2.5. It is necessary to set a task at all levels of power: to reach this level within 20 years. Let’s say by 2045. To do this, we need to restore the family. Today there are as many divorces in the country as there are marriages.

– It’s easy to say. How to do this if families are breaking up?

“These are revolutionary measures.” Organize a cult of a large family. What is 2.5 children on average? This means that half of all families in Russia should have 3-4 children. Now we have 7-8 percent of such families, but we need seven times more. In addition, in order to reach normal parameters in demographics, we need a cult of fathers.

– Do you mean that men need to be protected?

– This is a harmful, inaccurate interpretation. The problem is not to protect, but to educate a man. When in 1968 the Literary Gazette published an article by the outstanding Soviet demographer Boris Tsesarevich Urlanis, “Take care of men!”, the emphasis, in my opinion, was placed incorrectly.

Men must not be protected, but their legal and social status must be restored, otherwise men disappear as men, hence the shameful phenomenon of male excess mortality in our prime age. 30% of children grow up without a father at all, and another 50%, if there is a father in the family, do not see him and practically do not feel his influence.

Take a typical kindergarten today – there are no men there at all; they used to work as caretakers, but now these positions have been reduced. All teachers are women. The boy goes to school, and the teachers are also entirely women. It turns out that the child practically does not see men.

As a result, he enters adulthood with an indeterminate masculinity. This is a huge problem. Girls, on the contrary, grow up with character and build everyone up, with pretensions, even from kindergarten. Here they are on the rise, while boys surrounded by women are degrading. In the narrow sense of the word, there is no need to feel sorry for them. On the contrary, educate them in a Spartan spirit, so that they understand that they are men, breadwinners, and protectors.

— You are talking about creating a strong large family. But where will you get so many men? As you know, there are fewer of them in our country than women. And they don’t live that long either…

— In developed countries of the world, men live 3–4 years less than women; in Russia this difference is on average 6–7 years, and in some regions even 10–12 years. At the same time, according to statistics, 105 boys are born per 100 girls. By the age of 30, their numbers are approximately equal. But then men in their prime, up to 45 years of age, begin to experience excess mortality, when male mortality is approximately five times higher than in the European Union.

This is another key problem after the destruction of the family and the extremely low birth rate. Our authorities also need to concentrate on this, study it, and perhaps develop a special program to stop this excess mortality. However, even here we pretend that such a problem does not exist.

– One way or another, there are fewer men than women. While we study the problem, we will take measures… Maybe, on the advice of Zhirinovsky, we should allow bigamy or polygamy in Russia?

– All extravagant options only legalize the destruction of the family. I mean polygamy and the recognition of civil marriages as official… While we are faced with the colossal problem of restoring the priority of the family in the social system – a complete and strong family, with several children. And we, instead of doing business that is critical for the country, are practicing our wit.

The whole world is in a hole

— You said that demographic problems made themselves felt back in 1964, although the mid-60s were the golden time of Soviet socialism. The Khrushchev Thaw, space exploration, the flourishing of literature and culture, the development of virgin lands and Siberia… Why did the birth rate begin to fall?

— There is no exact answer to this question: no one has researched anything. The fundamental question of existence, the future of the country, interested no one. Even today he is far from being in first place in Russia. Most often, it is customary to blame everything on the education of women, on their desire for a career, on the growth of consumer attitudes… But no one has studied this phenomenon. At the same time, the drop in fertility below the level of simple reproduction is largely an artificially created and programmable process. Only if in China this was done extremely harshly and even cruelly, then in the so-called developed countries it was done softly and as if by itself.

— That is, the demographic hole is not only the fate of Russia, but the entire more or less economically developed world is in it?

“In general, this is a world-historical mystery that no one in the world is trying to solve. No one can say why there is a demographic hole in almost all countries of the world, including highly developed ones. In the history of mankind, everything has happened: bloody wars, plague, cholera, which claimed millions of lives. But after all the misfortunes, the human population always recovered. And now we ourselves suddenly refuse to reproduce. Despite the fact that in the same Western countries there is high-quality food, and developed medicine, and all the conditions for increasing the birth rate. For some reason, the instinct to continue the human race has ceased to be an instinct—a social instinct, of course.

— It turns out that planet Earth is dying out on its own, without any global wars or epidemics. Maybe some kind of mysticism?

– There is no mysticism. For more than 100 years, purposeful work has been going on around the world; enormous amounts of money have been invested in promoting the cessation of fertility and the renunciation of family. This is demonstrated more clearly in the example of China. Where in the 1970s of the last century the “One family – one child” program was introduced. In 2015, her sentence was relaxed and she was allowed to have two children, and two years ago, three. There are even incentive measures to support such families. But it turned out that it is possible to reduce the birth rate through administrative measures, but it is not possible to increase it…