Russia birth rate plummets to lowest in 25 years

Russia’s lower house of parliament voted unanimously on November 12 to ban what authorities cast as pernicious propaganda for a child-free way of life, hoping to boost a faltering birth rate.

Official data released in September put the birth rate at its lowest in a quarter of a century while mortality rates are up as Moscow’s war in Ukraine rages on. The Kremlin called the figures “catastrophic for the future of the nation”.

President Vladimir Putin, who has cast Russia as a bastion of “traditional values” locked in an existential struggle with a decadent West, has encouraged women to have at least three children, saying that will help secure the future of Russians. There are already financial and other incentives.

The law, expected to be swiftly approved by the upper house of parliament and Putin, joins other restrictions on free expression including a ban on content deemed to promote “non-traditional lifestyles” such as same-sex relationships or gender fluidity, as well as on dissenting accounts of the conflict in Ukraine.

Authors of “child-free propaganda” will be subject to fines of up to 400,000 roubles ($4,100) for individuals, twice that amount for officials, and up to 5 million roubles ($51,000) for legal entities.

Some 599,600 children were born in Russia in the first half of 2024, which is 16,000 fewer than in the first half of 2023 and the lowest since 1999. The number of deaths jumped by 49,000. However, immigration jumped by 20%.

Estimates in the CIA’s World Factbook put Russia among the 40 countries with the lowest birth rate in 2023 at around 9.22 per 1,000 population, slightly ahead of Germany on 9.02 but well behind China on 9.7 and the United States on 12.21.

“We are talking about protecting citizens, primarily the younger generation, from information disseminated in the media space that has a negative impact on the formation of people’s personality,” said Vyacheslav Volodin, chairman of the lower house and a senior Putin ally.

“Everything must be done to ensure that new generations of our citizens grow up centred on traditional family values.”

But some women were sceptical.

Alina Rzhanova, a 33-year-old who lives in Yaroslavl, 250 km northeast of Moscow, was once determined not to have children but now has an eight-month-old son.

“People want children, but there’s no money,” she said. “That’s why people are not having children. Not because someone somewhere wrote something.”

In Moscow, Yana, a 40-year-old woman who said she did not want children and declined to give her surname because of the subject’s sensitivity, said she too felt that ensuring decent living standards, particularly beyond the big cities, could help reverse the declining birth rate.

“People have children when they are confident in tomorrow. But when mortgage rates reach 20% a year, I don’t think it’s a good time to have unlimited children,” she said.

“A child-free community is where people on the same wavelength discuss why they don’t want children. Do they have the right to discuss it? They do.

“It’s unlikely that a lot of young people will read it and say ‘I don’t want children either’.”