 "To tackle the decline, Russia has promoted “traditional family values,” restricting abortion, banning “child-free” advocacy, and outlawing LGBTQ+ activism. (AFP)")
For twenty-five years, President Vladimir Putin has confronted the challenge of Russia’s dwindling and ageing population. In 1999, a year before he became president, the country recorded its lowest number of births ever. By 2005, he had argued that addressing the problem required “social and economic stability,” and in 2019 he acknowledged that the demographic crisis continued to “haunt” the nation. Speaking at a Kremlin demographic conference on Thursday, Putin again stressed that increasing births was “crucial” for Russia’s future.
The Kremlin has introduced numerous incentives to encourage larger families, including free school meals for children in bigger households and state awards for women with ten or more children, reported ABC news. In 2023, Putin said, “Many of our grandmothers and great-grandmothers had seven, eight, and even more children. Let’s preserve and revive these wonderful traditions.”
Births rose alongside economic growth from 1.21 million in 1999 to 1.94 million in 2015. Since then, however, births have declined, pressured by the war in Ukraine, financial instability, opposition to immigration, and a growing exodus of young people. According to the Federal Statistics Service, Russia’s population has fallen from 147.6 million in 1990 to 146.1 million this year, including the roughly 2 million residents of Crimea since its annexation in 2014. Meanwhile, the proportion of citizens aged 55 or older has risen from 21.1% in 1990 to 30% in 2024.
Births have decreased each year since 2015, with only 1.22 million live births last year — barely above the 1999 low. Demographer Alexei Raksha noted that February 2025 recorded the lowest number of births in more than 200 years.
Impact Shorts
More ShortsSocial controls and economic pressures fail to boost fertility
To address the decline, Russian authorities have emphasised “traditional family values,” implementing laws restricting abortion, banning the promotion of “child-free ideology,” and outlawing LGBTQ+ activism. According to feminist scholar Sasha Talaver, officials view these measures as a solution to demographic problems, expecting women to prioritise motherhood as a patriotic duty.
Economic instability further discourages young couples from having children, while historical factors have left deep demographic scars. The deaths of 27 million Soviet citizens during World War II dramatically reduced the male population, and the collapse of the Soviet Union triggered another drop in births. Today, the number of women in their twenties and early thirties — key childbearing years — is small, leaving authorities “desperate to get as many babies as possible out of this much smaller number of women,” according to Jenny Mathers of the University of Aberystwyth.
The war in Ukraine has compounded the issue. Although Russia has not disclosed military losses, Western estimates suggest hundreds of thousands of deaths, and many young people have fled abroad to avoid military service or political repression. Mathers highlighted that this has reduced both the pool of p…