Russian women rushed to give birth to four children

– Alexey, the year is ending. Somehow you can already estimate how much the birth rate picture in Russia has worsened again, compared to 2022, when there was a complete failure.

⁃ This year the birth rate in the country has not dropped at all. There are several possible explanations for this. Firstly, a system of cash payments to low-income families with children has finally taken shape. More than a trillion rubles a year are now spent on this, twice as much as maternity capital.

But we must understand that this is not a demographic measure, but a social one, and such measures do not directly and immediately increase the birth rate. One of the reasons for the intensified fight against child poverty was the fact that maternity capital dispersed large families, but at the same time poverty also increased. Now benefits have reduced poverty. The money paid for SVO also played a role. They went into consumption and the economy.

– So-called helicopter money?

– Combat, state defense orders – they gave a large amount of cash for all this. Increased incomes of the population usually translate into the birth of second and subsequent children, so we will watch. This year the birth rate of fourth children has increased significantly.

– Why is this?

– Perhaps because fathers of four children are not taken into the army. By any standards, these are large families. In general, it must be said that in Europe over the last twenty years Russia has begun to become a leader in the birth rate of third and subsequent children.

– Then why is everyone talking about how bad everything is with us? The State Duma is discussing the issue of strict restrictions on artificial termination of pregnancy in order to save Russia from extinction – only up to 8 weeks and up to 12 for social reasons, with the consent of two parents, they also propose removing abortion from the compulsory medical insurance system.

– I’ll say a paradoxical thing. I believe that this is not a Russian agenda, this is an American agenda, to plunge us into all this and create tension in society, to constantly promote the topic in society until it causes sharp rejection. They harm us, so write it. They want to destroy Russia through conservatives.

The deputies understand perfectly well that with such measures they will not increase the birth rate. Maximum, temporarily and by a few percent. Why this is being done is not a question for me. I am a demographer and can only talk about the demographic result.

– But all over the world the traditional agenda is now being promoted, including a ban on abortion. Is not it?

⁃ I’ll start with the United States, where last year the federal repeal of the historic Roe v. Wade amendment, adopted in 1972 by the US Supreme Court on the legality of abortion in all states, took place. It so happened that during the reign of Republican presidents, lifelong old members of the Supreme Court, mostly Democratic, died; Republican candidates appointed their own, conservative judges who opposed allowing abortion. And they pushed this topic. At the moment, American society is divided into 45/55, who are against abortion and who are for it. Still, the majority is in favor, although the advantage is not strong.

– It’s worth adding here that American society in many issues is much more traditional than Russian society, no matter what they try to instill in us.

– Yes, the most conservative part is the American south and the prairies: Alabama, Mississippi, the Midwest. After this amendment was repealed in June 2022, abortion was automatically outlawed in a number of states, in some states abortion was left up to four weeks, in others up to six, in others it was not allowed at all.

There was a slight increase in birth rates in Texas after that, about 3%, but that was mostly due to Hispanics. Since after the lifting of covid restrictions, there was a mass emigration of this category to the United States across the southern border. Emigrants poured into America and, apparently, began to urgently give birth so that their children would receive the right to citizenship at their place of birth, and their parents would receive legal residence. By 2023, the rise had tapered off. However, the total number of abortions still increased due to neighboring states.

– How are things going in Poland, where there is extremely strict legislation on abortion even after rape?

– This year there is the lowest birth rate in the history of the country. This may be due to foreign policy events, inflation, anything. But women refuse to get pregnant and give birth. Everyone remembers the size of the demonstrations in Poland against the abortion ban, and this year the conservatives lost the elections. Mainly because of this, I think. The topic was suppressed – and society rejected it.

– But Russian citizens, on the contrary, support the spiritual and moral criteria outlined by the president. One of which is happy large families.

– The majority of ordinary people are against the ban on abortion. There is no need to take the situation with prohibitions to the point of absurdity so that people end up having less sex and, accordingly, giving birth. Someone wants there to be no education in this regard, so that young people are not taught how to protect themselves and plan a family. If you don’t want abortions, explain what is needed not to have them. No, they don’t.

They are trying to forcibly return Russia to the 19th century with a birth rate of 7 children per woman. But in 2023 this is impossible. No one has yet been able to deliberately forcibly and for a long time lower society to a lower level of development than it already is.

I saw speeches of this nature in the State Duma: they say, let’s also take away smartphones, limit girls’ access to education, resettle people, like the Khmer Rouge, from cities to villages, make them dependent on their husbands and lock them in huts on “red days” so that only were fruitful and multiplied.

Let’s not forget that at a time when the birth rate was 7 children per woman, 2-3 children of them died in the first year of life, and only three out of seven lived to the age of 30, the average life expectancy was below 30 years.

It seems to me that the people who promote this do not live without comfort themselves, but for some reason they want to force others to do so. There is no need to prevaricate, the goals of all this are extremely far from the proclaimed ones. Although, of course, there are those who sincerely support this, but do not see the consequences. I have sympathy for such people as for people with the brains of small children.

– There is a “first demographic transition” and there is a “second”. The first has already passed or is going on everywhere, the second has not even begun everywhere. Already in the first, there is a decrease in the birth rate due to a lack of resources as a result of population growth, which, in turn, was the result of a decrease in mortality; a large number of offspring is no longer needed for survival, because almost all newborns survive due to good medicine.

Moreover, there is not enough money, energy and time for all the survivors, and the number of children is regulated by late marriages, abstinence, and contraception. Traditionalists want women to give birth as in the first stage, and live as in the second. But that’s not how it works to turn history back?

– It didn’t work anywhere – turn the minced meat back in the meat grinder. A high (but not 7 children per woman, but 3) birth rate combined with a high standard of living is observed only in Israel, where a significant number of highly religious Jews came. Special enclaves were created for them, and their share of the population gradually grew over the decades. We are trying to quickly move the process in this direction, but we still need to go to the level from which Israel began, at least a century or more. What lies beyond the horizon of any planning.

– At what age do the ultra-Orthodox begin to give birth in Israel? From nineteen to twenty years, as Russian officials suggest?

⁃ Just not. In Israel, the first child is born on average to a 27-28-year-old mother, and then every 2-3 years, and sometimes up to 40 years old, a woman gives birth. On average, families have three children. But at the same time, the age of first birth is even higher than in Russia. And everyone succeeds.

The true motives of those who promote early childbirth in our country are based on dubious philistine assumptions that the sooner a woman gives birth to her first child, the more children she will eventually have. I believe that those who initially want many children will themselves begin to give birth earlier. And vice versa.

– We also offer maternity capital for the firstborn after 25 years, so that there are fewer old-timers.

– Similar attempts have already been made in different regions – to limit local payments by the age of the mother, and there was no effect other than a negative one. The manic fight against abortion is also very late: we already have 12 times fewer abortions than in the late USSR, and the demographic decline continues.

There are noticeably fewer abortions in Russia than the statistics might suggest to an inattentive researcher. Our statistics also include natural miscarriages, ectopic pregnancies, hydatidiform moles and other anomalies. Because the medical form itself is called “abortive pregnancy,” that is, everything that did not end in the birth of a child, and that’s about 500 thousand. And there are about 300,000 or so surgical and medical abortions under the supervision of doctors. For comparison, in the Soviet Union in 1988 there were more than 4 million induced abortions.

So society in this regard has changed a lot for the better.

– What awaits expectant mothers in 2024 in terms of money?

⁃ But there are problems with this. We currently have a wonderful program of 450 thousand rubles for a mortgage for those who have given birth to a third or subsequent child. It began in January 2019, and in 2020 it began to produce results, with more than one hundred thousand additional children born in 3 years.

The program was originally supposed to last until the end of 2022. It’s normal for such projects to be extended at least a year and a half before completion, but apparently there was no time for that, and it was extended much later, in June, and only for a year, which in 2023 affected the birth rate of third children for the worse.

It is now October 2023, and there is no news about the next extension yet. Even if it is eventually continued, I expect an inevitable failure for the third children in early 2024. There are also questions regarding maternity capital. Since it has only been announced until 2026, it’s time to start thinking about what’s next. After all, the transfer of most of the maternity capital to the first child already had a negative impact on the birth of second children. Its effectiveness in demographic terms was simply killed.

I warned that this would happen, but, apparently, those who proposed this were guided by some other motives, or were simply short-sighted.