Senators and Deputies Discussed Demographics in Two Hearings

The Federation Council and the State Duma held parliamentary hearings on demographic issues on Thursday. Participants in both events acknowledged that the state is making a lot of efforts to support large families, but these measures still seem to be insufficient to reverse the alarming trends.

The significance of the topic, the discussion of which opened with hearings in the Federation Council (FC), was immediately emphasized by the Chairman of the Federation Council, Valentina Matvienko, calling demography “one of the main factors in the country’s development.” She assured that in Russia, issues of supporting fertility and motherhood remain priorities of state policy “for a long time”: “There is probably no second country in the world where a family support system has been built at the state level from the mother’s pregnancy to the beginning of the child’s adult life.”

However, the demographic situation remains difficult, Ms. Matvienko admitted: this is the result of a drop in the birth rate in the 90s and social trends common to all developed countries, such as an increase in the age of marriage and a decrease in the number of children per woman. The speaker of the Federation Council believes that, among other things, labor guarantees for young parents, programs to provide families with housing and tax preferences, “including exemption from income tax” will help to reverse the trend: “The birth of a child should not lead to a decrease in the standard of living, but be the beginning of a more prosperous life stage.”

The head of the Ministry of Labor of the Russian Federation Anton Kotyakov presented the current measures to increase the birth rate to the hearing participants in detail. He also named the key factors influencing demographic indicators: national-cultural and religious attitudes, welfare and level of socio-economic development of the subject. The regional specifics and results of implementing specific measures to support the birth rate were discussed by Presidential Envoy to the Central Federal District Igor Shchegolev and the heads of several regions.

A political discussion on the same issues began to boil a few hours later in the State Duma. Here, industry “problems, development prospects and legislative solutions” were discussed on the initiative of the Committee on Family, Women and Children, which received a new name (on family protection, issues of paternity, maternity and childhood) and, as its head Nina Ostanina (Communist Party of the Russian Federation) emphasized, mission. The fact that the discussion promises to be heated was indirectly confirmed by the remark of Duma Speaker Vyacheslav Volodin at the plenary session on November 9. Reacting to a complaint from colleagues about certain “resonant proposals from deputies,” he said: “It’s better not to voice such initiatives. Because they insult both women and men.”

The deputies began, however, not with “wrong” initiatives (which were touched upon later), but with a gloomy statement of facts. “By 2046, the population of the Russian Federation, excluding new regions, will be 138 million people: 7.5% less than now,” stated Deputy Chairman of the Duma Anna Kuznetsova (United Russia, United Russia), recalling the total fertility rate at the end of 2022 years (1.42), which is “below even the replacement level.” “A lot has been done to support families,” but the situation requires increasing measures in “three blocks”: material, value and infrastructure, the vice speaker continued. She ordered her colleagues not to take their eyes off the structures aimed at solving demographic problems and to work on the issue of fundamental internal parliamentary research on the topic under discussion.

Nina Ostanina focused primarily on the issues of protecting large families and advised finally to enshrine the corresponding definition in legislation, as well as the minimum standards for allowances and payments: “At the birth of each subsequent child, capital must increase, otherwise we will never encourage our families to become large.”

Many other speakers also emphasized the well-being of families, and the rector of the Higher School of Organization and Management of Health Care, Guzel Ulumbekova, posed the question more acutely than others: “The first and main factor is the socio-economic situation of women and families with children: in 2022 they cannot buy a refrigerator, almost 60% of families with one and two children, 65% with three children, 80% of families with one parent.” In her opinion, income should be redistributed not only in favor of families, but also in the health care fund: “When you, deputies, discuss the health care budget, please vote so that there is money there, and stop unscientific talk about prohibitions and what- something else.”

However, “talk about prohibitions”, coupled with remarks about ideology, took up almost the majority of the discussion. Deputy Speaker of the Duma Pyotr Tolstoy (ER) was the first to focus on “goals and values”: “In addition to material incentives, there are such things as confidence in the future.” He also reported that there are two statistics on abortions – “official and real”, and, according to the second, up to 1.5 million abortions occur in the country due to the activities of commercial clinics: “I propose to reduce this legal space for killing children. The woman makes her own decision, but it is important to ensure that everything is in accordance with the law.” Deputy Dmitry Gusev (A Just Russia – For Truth) also recommended transferring abortions to state clinics, who also pointed out the need to “recognize the life of a child even before his birth.”

Deputy Sultan Khamzaev (United Russia), the author of that very “resonant initiative”, who proposed “buying back” children from women who decided to have an abortion, could not help but talk about abortion. “Many people don’t like that I have a position,” he complained. “They told me: it’s wrong, you can’t encourage a woman (to refuse an abortion.” “Kommersant”). But I am a Muslim, born in Dagestan, and I could have avoided discussing this topic at all – after all, all Muslim republics, according to statistics, have a positive color – and stood on the sidelines.” But United Russia resolutely refused to “stand on the sidelines” and brought up the Old Testament argument “for his Orthodox brothers”: “Deliver those led to death and ransom those killed, do not spare money.”

“The republic that you represent leads in the number of divorces, and the reason here, as demographers say, is social,” retorted Nina Ostanina. “You are absolutely right, absolutely! – Mr. Khamzaev unexpectedly agreed. “They get divorced because they give benefits, and I don’t blame them, because people want to feed their families.” He added that he did not intend to take an “ostrich position and say that everything is fine in Dagestan,” but finally disarmed the communist with a compliment about her unconditional correctness in matters of supporting large families “in one click”: “For young mothers, receiving benefits is a whole quest . But the state should not follow the principle of “prove it”: as it recorded five children, it should come and write everything down and give it to them.”

At the end of the three-hour discussion, the voice of the people was heard. Mrs. Ostanina asked the students present in the hall if they had a desire to start a family: “Or did you decide that these deputies won’t help anyway?” “I, as a woman, think about the conditions that I can provide for my child, since I consider myself a socially responsible citizen,” assured student Ekaterina Sharfova, adding that “childfree is not such a popular topic,” and the guys “just want to their child grew up in perfect conditions” (primarily referring to housing). This remark should have especially pleased the leader of the New People, Alexei Nechaev, who had previously proposed shifting preferential mortgages to the “family side” and appointing the Central Bank as the body responsible for demography. But he only sadly summarized: “All this, of course, will require courage from us, the deputies.”

Grigory Leiba