Putin says Russia's population rising

Ian, Russia did not annex those two regions. The two regions are independent. Even if they were annexed, their total populations are extremely small to have much of an effect on population growth. I strongly feel that such a rude comment was totally not called for.

God bless Russia and their newborns as well as all newborns of the world.

Peace

The myth of Russia's catastrophic depopulation has long been doing the rounds and has always been rubbish (i.e. short term trends = long term trends), believed of course by russophobes who love any Russia related bad news. A. Karlin of the Sublime Oblivion blog addresses quite a number of the population myths in this post: http://www.sublimeoblivion.com/2009/12/07/myths-russia-demography/

You'd naturally expect Russia's population to rise after it annexed two chunks of land from neighbouring Georgia.

"We can say with a high degree of confidence that Russia will register a growth in population for the first time since 1995," said Mr Putin at an end-of-year government meeting broadcast on state television. "

Funny, he didn't say anything about being grateful to Gorbachev for this...

Soviet leaders became worried about a declining birthrate long ago, and Putin talked about it in what I think was his first speech after becoming president. But only Gorbachev actually managed to improve the situation (with incentives for new mothers and maybe the anti-alcohol campaign) for about 5 years, approximately 1984-1989. Then came the economic collapse, and the birthrate crashed. (Population in Russia increased for a few more years as Russians returned from the "near abroad.") So for 20 years, a bumper crop of potential mothers - the "boomers" has been making its way to the childbearing front.

Russian women traditionally have their kids between the ages of 20 and 30, so the first of the boomers would have started having children in 2004, and then, every year for the next four years the number of childbearing women would have increased (pre-Gorbachev mothers + boomers), until the oldest boomers started aging out, to be less-than-replaced by the oldest post-boom mothers (the "crashers"). So the peak would occur about 2009-2010, when there would be a maximum of boomers and a minimum of crashers in the 10-year childbearing span. In other words, this is probably the tail-end of the process, and these numbers may be as good as they get for the Russian birthrate. Which is not necessarily a good thing for the rest of the world.

'A. Karlin of the Sublime Oblivion blog addresses quite a number of the population myths in this post: [link]/'

Interesting, but he still doesn't see the rate per woman as even approaching the replacement level (2.1 kids per woman)in the foreseeable future, and that population "pyramid" shows that sudden drop-off I mentioned in women of childbearing age in the coming years (compare the number of 20-24-year-olds to the number of 10-14-year-olds).

The decline in Russian population is not something to be cheered - it means the Russian military is going to be forced to put more reliance on nuclear weapons in the future, for one thing.

You'd naturally expect Russia's population to rise after it annexed two chunks of land from neighbouring Georgia.

"We can say with a high degree of confidence that Russia will register a growth in population for the first time since 1995," said Mr Putin at an end-of-year government meeting broadcast on state television. "

Funny, he didn't say anything about being grateful to Gorbachev for this...

Soviet leaders became worried about a declining birthrate long ago, and Putin talked about it in what I think was his first speech after becoming president. But only Gorbachev actually managed to improve the situation (with incentives for new mothers and maybe the anti-alcohol campaign) for about 5 years, approximately 1984-1989. Then came the economic collapse, and the birthrate crashed. (Population in Russia increased for a few more years as Russians returned from the "near abroad.") So for 20 years, a bumper crop of potential mothers - the "boomers" has been making its way to the childbearing front.

Russian women traditionally have their kids between the ages of 20 and 30, so the first of the boomers would have started having children in 2004, and then, every year for the next four years the number of childbearing women would have increased (pre-Gorbachev mothers + boomers), until the oldest boomers started aging out, to be less-than-replaced by the oldest post-boom mothers (the "crashers"). So the peak would occur about 2009-2010, when there would be a maximum of boomers and a minimum of crashers in the 10-year childbearing span. In other words, this is probably the tail-end of the process, and these numbers may be as good as they get for the Russian birthrate. Which is not necessarily a good thing for the rest of the world.

'A. Karlin of the Sublime Oblivion blog addresses quite a number of the population myths in this post: [link]/'

Interesting, but he still doesn't see the rate per woman as even approaching the replacement level (2.1 kids per woman)in the foreseeable future, and that population "pyramid" shows that sudden drop-off I mentioned in women of childbearing age in the coming years (compare the number of 20-24-year-olds to the number of 10-14-year-olds).

The decline in Russian population is not something to be cheered - it means the Russian military is going to be forced to put more reliance on nuclear weapons in the future, for one thing.

Ian, Russia did not annex those two regions. The two regions are independent. Even if they were annexed, their total populations are extremely small to have much of an effect on population growth. I strongly feel that such a rude comment was totally not called for.

God bless Russia and their newborns as well as all newborns of the world.

Peace

The myth of Russia's catastrophic depopulation has long been doing the rounds and has always been rubbish (i.e. short term trends = long term trends), believed of course by russophobes who love any Russia related bad news. A. Karlin of the Sublime Oblivion blog addresses quite a number of the population myths in this post: http://www.sublimeoblivion.com/2009/12/07/myths-russia-demography/