The All-Russian Day of Family, Love and Fidelity, celebrated since 2008, this year for the first time expands the its age boundaries, as the year 2012 is devoted to middle-aged and senior people. Here is why.
On June 12 twins Alexander and Dmitry were born onto the Volga family of Anatoly and Elmira Magarin. The overjoyed administration of Ulyanovsk region that announced the Give Birth to Patriot action at the beginning of the year handed over the keys from two UAZ-Patriot off-road vehicles to the young family. The action organizers had to spend quite a penny, given that in 17 districts of the Ulyanovsk region 74 babies were born on June 12, 2012 – 43 boys and 31 girls. But only 74 free off-road vehicles is almost a symbolic pay for creativity. The city and region of Ulyanovsk is one of the few national regions where nativity exceeded the death rate starting in 2006, after long 20 years of falling. Even in the crisis year 2009 and the following years more people were born than died there, though in 2010 the city and region were floundering.
The rest of Russia is characterized by an opposite trend. No sooner had the aftermaths of the long demographic crisis (when the birth rate had been falling down to a critical mark since 1991 and life duration had gone down to the record low 58 years for men and 67 years for women) had been overcome by 2006, than a new wave of demographic crisis came rolling. As reported by Rosstat, in 2011 the number of Russians decreased by 50,400 or 0.04% and now comes to 141.9 million people.
It is these figures that are now referred to by the federal authorities in their aspiration to prove that the Family Year conducted for the first time in 2008 as a prototype of the annual Day of Family, Love and Fidelity has yielded positive results as the birth rate has grown and the death rate is on the wane.
True, the birth rate in the nation at large has not exceeded the death rate, alas. Hence the rationale by government officials: our ranks are dwindling, but there could be fewer Russians if not for our measures aimed at protecting the family and health of the nation.
Death rate slowdown measures – limiting the time and space of alcohol sales; a more complex procedure to qualify for the driving license and an easier procedure for its requisitioning including the longer incarceration for road accidents; introducing the Health Passport and reinstatement of medical examinations; implementation of the Maternal Capital program – are bringing first encouraging results. People die less; life expectancy has risen to 67 years for men and to 71 for women.
The figures are not too impressive, but the mortality from various diseases including alcoholism and alcoholic intoxication is going down. Yet deaths caused by road accidents are on the rise – up to 42,000 people in 2010 alone. By this indicator Russia ranks number one in Europe. But on the whole, academics admit, the nation is slowly getting out of the demographic pit, though two factors alerted the scholars in 2011. The first one is that is was not the high birth rate, despite its 3-percent growth, that made up for the natural decline in population last year, but rather the increase in migration flows by 61.7%. The second is that even after the financial crisis of 2008-2009 the number of abortions keeps growing in the country.
An entire social group has been formed in megalopolises who resort to abortions because either they or their husbands, having lost jobs or suffered from a slump in family income levels, are unable to repay their loans. Demographers found out that it is men who insist on abortions because the stronger sex is more sensitive to would-be inability to maintain the family and to the job loss fear, which dictate the “capitulatory” behavioral model.
Yet the threat of abortions is not the greatest problem. An even greater problem is that in 2012-2014 the generation of those who were born in 1990-1995, when the birth rate was at its lowest, are entering the fertility period. Therefore staking on growing fertility is a wrong way, demographers argue. It will naturally keep falling during the next 6-10 years.
And so the baby boom is giving way to the period of protracted nativity fall. However the national authorities set ambitious goals: to increase the Russian population to 145 million people until 2018-2020. The problem is that the demographic decline which our nation fails to overcome is one of the main impediments to economic growth. For now the national economy benefits from residual “demographic dividends” of the 1980s and the baby boom period of the early XXI century. However, the statistics and demographic surveys show that even these resources are almost exhausted. It means there will be none to work tomorrow. And so researchers assume that it is not the fertility growth that has to be prioritized at present, as rather the extension of activity of those who are now the backbone of our workforce.
It is for this reason that the Day of Family, Love and Fidelity in 2012 makes an emphasis on the older generation – those who are now in their late 40s as well as young grannies and grandpas in their early 50s.
“This is the backbone of the traditional Russian family consisting of several generations,” says Natalia Rimashevskaya. “The extension of the active lifestyle and health of these people is our lifesaver in the decade to come. The healthier they are and the higher their working capacity the higher the odds that we go smoothly through the period of lower birth rate. And this process of mortality reduction may well be kept under control. External mortality factors harbor great potential. Road accidents, alcoholic intoxication, better medical services, and work opportunities for senior people – the authorities might decisively influence these parameters, counteracting the negative trends. Everything is in their hands. The bottom line is to realize that the ‘era of minutia’ is about to set in, when the life of each particular person may prove to be that very ‘straw’ that will rescue the nation.”
Vladimir Emelyanenko
