According to the UN Department of Economic and Social Affairs, today the world is experiencing another demographic transition, which is characterized by an increase in human life expectancy and a decrease in the birth rate. World fertility rate 1950-1955. was five births per woman, in 2010-2015. - twice as much. The number of countries in which this coefficient is 2.1 is growing. This is the so-called replacement level, at which a generation of parents gives birth to an equivalent number of children to replace them. In 1975-1980, only 21% of the world population had a birth rate at this level, in 2010-2015 - already 46%. According to UN forecasts, already between 2025 and 2030, two thirds of the world's population will live in countries in which the birth rate will fall below replacement level.

Why is the birth rate declining?

Scientists have concluded that the decline in the birth rate is not associated with a low standard of living. On the contrary, according to statistics, higher birth rates are observed in developing countries than in developed countries. That is, the poorer the country, the more children are born there. This was established back in the 19th century, when the French demographer Jacques Bertillon conducted a study of the birth rate in the districts of Paris, Berlin and Vienna and found that fewer children were born in wealthier families.

The American analytical company Stratfor writes that there are now too many elderly dependents in the world and not enough working population. Therefore, a decrease in the birth rate can lead to negative consequences in the global economy. The company identifies the following reasons for the decline in the birth rate: changes in religious values, the emancipation of women, an increase in their employment, higher costs of child care and education.

A 2017 report by the UN Department of Economic and Social Affairs noted that the decline general level fertility is associated with the aging of the Earth's population. Demographers also attribute the decline to a reduction in child mortality, high access to modern contraception and the increased desire of women to postpone having children in order to get an education and build a career.

American anthropologists led by Paul Hooper in a 2016 article they write that the listed factors exist, but the real reason for the decline in the birth rate is competition for high social status and the possession of prestigious things. The study's authors note that the sharpest decline in fertility occurs in countries with market economies, where there is competition for jobs and a surplus of consumer goods. Anthropologists have argued this hypothesis using the example of the Tsimane tribe living in northern Bolivia. The average Tsimane family has nine children, but for members who have moved to cities closer to the Spanish-speaking population, the average number of children per family drops to three.

Aminat Magomedova, candidate of economic sciences, Associate Professor, Department of Population Faculty of Economics Moscow State University named after Lomonosov. “There are different approaches to explaining the historical evolution of fertility. Within the framework of the theory of demographic transition, a decrease in fertility is an element of the global demographic process of transition to a more economical reproduction regime. The concept of demographic homeostasis examines the dynamics of fertility in connection with mortality rates. The higher the mortality rate in a society, the more children it takes to even reproduce itself. And as the mortality rate decreases, the birth rate also decreases,” says Magomedova.

One approach is the utility concept, which explains the birth of children by their utility. “Within the framework of the economic utility of children, a change in the direction of transfer of benefits “from children to parents” to “from parents to children” is considered. If earlier children were beneficial as a labor force, it was believed that the more children, the stronger the family economically, but now we understand that it is children who require maximum expenses, time, effort, and energy. There is also an explanation in terms of psychological usefulness. It is believed that even one child can satisfy the psychological need for children in modern society. To do this, you don’t need to have them in large quantities", says the expert.

Magomedova also notes that the decline in the birth rate is associated with the coming to the forefront of personal interests, the individualization of the sphere of fertility, and the lesser influence of traditions and norms on the decision to have a child. Increasing the share of educated women and increasing women's employment in post-industrial society lead to postponing the birth of children, and sometimes to refusal to have them.

MOSCOW, January 31— RIA Novosti, Igor Karmazin. According to Rosstat, the birth rate in Russia has fallen to a ten-year low. For the first time in recent years, the country has recorded a natural population decline. RIA Novosti looked into why this happened and what to expect in the coming years.

Back to the 1990s

"The birth rate depends on the number of young women in reproductive age. Last year, the smallest generation in Russia—those born in 1999—turned 18. Throughout the second half of the 1990s and the first half of the 2000s, the birth rate was extremely low. The increase began only after 2006. We had absolutely wild swings associated with socio-economic upheavals. Second half of the 1980s - 1986-1987 - 2.5 million births! Then a decline - by the mid-1990s there were 1.3-1.4 million births per year. Finally, 1.2 million in 1999,” notes Elizarov.

The expert emphasizes that now the generation of those born during the demographic crisis is approaching the age of childbearing. “Children are now most often given birth at the age of 25-26. Those born in 1992-1993 have approached this milestone, and at that time a decline was already recorded. Now you yourself understand that this is not the end,” says Elizarov.

Wivesmen

At the same time, the explanation of the situation is not limited to the problems of the 1990s. Yes, there are fewer women, but each individual woman gives birth less. The very approach of citizens to building a family has changed, and priorities have shifted. According to the same Rosstat, the average age of a Russian mother is 26 years. This is five years more than in the 1990s. During this time, the interval between the birth of the first and second child in the family also almost doubled. In the 1990s there was an average of three years, and in 2017 it was already 5.6 years. Thus, the birth of the second and subsequent children was pushed back beyond the mother’s 30th birthday.

Professor of the Department of Labor and Social Policy at the Institute of Public Service and Management (IGSU) RANEPA Alexander Shcherbakov points out that the reason should also be sought in the low standard of living and the desire to improve the well-being of the family through work and one’s own labor. In addition, Russian women in general now have much more career ambitions. “We have a paradoxical situation: women think about their gender destiny only secondarily. They more share the male view of life, where career comes first. And modern men are more and more like women. They often do not set themselves the task of financially providing for their family ", warns Shcherbakov.

The country's authorities understand that the situation is very serious and are taking measures. So, in November 2017, Russian President Vladimir Putin spoke about the “reset” demographic policy countries. In December, the head of state signed a law on monthly payments to families after the birth of their first child. On average, the amount in 2018 will be, depending on the region, 10,523 rubles, in 2019 - 10,836 rubles, in 2020 - 11,143 rubles. The payment is targeted; the income of each family is taken into account when calculating. The right to receive money is granted to those whose average income per family member does not exceed one and a half times the subsistence level.

In addition, in December the president signed a law extending the program until the end of 2021 maternity capital. At the birth of a second and third child, Russian citizens are entitled to a payment. Its size in 2017 is 453,026 rubles.

They don't want sex

Solving economic issues, however, is not a panacea. Just look at global trends. According to the UN, of the 21 countries with the highest birth rates, 19 are in Africa. All European countries belong to the countries with the lowest birth rates, although it is clear that the economic situation there is much better than on the African continent.

Sexologist, head of the Center for Sexual Health Anna Koteneva believes that the decline in the birth rate is influenced by specific modern morality. “Too much unnecessary information, excessive fuss. Modern man lives according to the principle “here and now”, “after me there’s a flood.” Everyone wants to enjoy life, responsibility, including for children, is perceived as a burden. Selfishness, individualism, independence rule , even infantilism,” she says.

Koteneva adds that current technologies seem to open up limitless opportunities for communication; many moral prohibitions have been lifted. "But the modern generation does not know how to communicate, often does not want it. The value of physiological intimacy has decreased. Previously, sex for young people was something forbidden, mysterious, desirable. Now it is available, but it has become on a par with other pleasures, entertainment, intimate the relationship has become devalued,” says the sexologist.

Be that as it may, forecasts for the near future are not very optimistic. Rosstat warns: natural population decline is expected every year until 2035, and the peak will occur in 2025-2028. This trend will be balanced by migration growth, but the population of Russia, demographers believe, will still decline during this period.

demographic birth rate mortality population

Since the change in the mortality rate in Russia was the most dramatic and has been widely studied, there are several different hypotheses in this regard:

Here is a list of the most popular ones:

1. Alcohol consumption

2. Environmental problems

3. Poverty and poor nutrition

4. The collapse of the healthcare system

5. Reaction to strong changes in social conditions, stress

6. Compensation after a period of low mortality in the second half of the eighties

Let's look at some of them. Studies have shown that the health care system plays a fairly important role, but still not a decisive one. This is explained by the fact that most causes of death in our time are determined not by the quality of the healthcare system, but by self-preservation behavior.

Environmental problems can be ruled out immediately - the decline in production only caused an improvement in the environmental situation.

Alcohol consumption can play a fairly important role, since the percentage of deaths from alcohol poisoning, as well as its consumption, has increased during the reforms. But drunkenness cannot be considered as a cause - it is only a consequence of other factors, mainly spiritual.

Also, the increase in mortality may be caused by the compensation effect after the anti-alcohol campaign - that is, those who were supposed to die from alcohol poisoning in the second half of the eighties began to die only now, after the anti-alcohol measures of that time were lifted.

The dominant point of view is that one of the main reasons for our troubles is the deteriorating economic situation: for the nation to get healthier, it is necessary to improve the standard of living. However, after analyzing the dynamics of mortality over 25 years (since the mid-70s), we can find that none of economic indicators does not explain its trajectory.

A study conducted in the mid-90s in Russia showed that, from a medical point of view, people began to behave more healthy image life, while mortality has only increased.

In his book “Demographic Catastrophe in Russia: Causes, Mechanism, Ways to Overcome,” Doctor of Medical Sciences I. Gundarov presented the results of research into the causes of increased mortality in Russia.

Reasons for the decline in fertility

As was written above, when considering the birth rate in Russia, we can trace not one, but two problems. The first is a gradual decline in the birth rate throughout the entire period under review. The second is the sharp decline in the birth rate that began in 1987 and continues to this day.

It is extremely important to note that graph 1 exactly repeats the graph of the third and fourth phases of the demographic transition in its pessimistic second version.

According to the theory of demographic transition, all countries and peoples go through the same stages in their demographic history, each of which corresponds to a certain type of population reproduction.

If we consider the processes taking place in Russia today from the point of view of the theory of demographic transition, then we can assume that today's depopulation is not caused by some external circumstances - for example, reforms, but is a natural process occurring not only in Russia, but also in many other developed countries .

If we compare the birth rate schedule in Russia with the demographic transition schedule, then phase III began at the end of the 19th century, and phase IV - in 1987. Thus, the theory of demographic transition explains both of the above problems.

And although this theory does not say what follows the fourth phase, one can assume two options for the further development of events - either the situation will stabilize after some time (still at an insufficient level), or, what is more likely, it will worsen further.

Politicians, ordinary people, and even many researchers are of the opinion that any woman has a natural desire to have many children, and only the lack of conditions prevents her from realizing this desire, and as soon as the necessary conditions are created, the birth rate will immediately increase. This position is called the “interference paradigm.” Research shows that this approach is completely wrong. The real reason for the low birth rate is not that certain factors prevent a woman from having many children. The 1994 micro-census asked about the desired number of children under ideal conditions, and this number was 1.9 children, which is not enough even for simple population reproduction. That is, even if all interfering factors are eliminated and ideal conditions to have children, the problem of low birth rate will not be solved. Consequently, the main reason for the decline in fertility should be sought not in some external factors, such as prosperity or confidence in the future, but in culture and public consciousness.

There is widespread public opinion that the fall in income levels as a result of reforms is the main reason for the fall in the birth rate, and the economic factor is considered to be of decisive importance. Unfortunately, this opinion is shared even in the highest circles of power. However, the results of studies conducted both in Russia and in a number of European capitals showed an inverse relationship between the birth rate and the level of well-being. That is, in poor families the birth rate was higher than in rich ones. Moreover, studies have shown that not only the actual, but also the planned number of children in poor families was higher. From this we can conclude that it was not the fall in income levels that caused the birth rate crisis in Russia.

Meanwhile, one should not discount the economic factor altogether, since it undoubtedly has a certain significance. It is known that through economic measures - increasing benefits, etc., it is possible to increase the birth rate, but, unfortunately, only to the level of the desired number of children in the family, which, for example, today in Russia is 1.9 children per family, that is, below the level of simple reproduction population. Therefore, the question is to raise precisely the level of the desired number of children in the family, and here economic measures powerless.

Based on numerous studies of reproductive behavior in Russia and abroad, data have been obtained that allows us to believe with great confidence that it is cultural factors that play a decisive role in reducing the birth rate.

Types of population reproduction, or phases of demographic transition, strictly depend on the mode of production in society. Phases I and II correspond to the agricultural mode of production, phase III - industrial, and phase IV - post-industrial.

This is easy to explain - in an agrarian society, children were necessary for survival, as they were workers, helpers, and protectors. The well-being of a family directly depended on the number of children. Moreover, mortality in the agricultural era was very high, and where mortality is high, birth rates are usually high.

In the industrial era, the family ceases to be a production unit; children are no longer necessary for survival, but for procreation and satisfying the emotional needs of parents. Therefore, the desired number of children in the industrial era is 1-3 children per family, and this number gradually decreases, initially remaining sufficient for simple population reproduction, and even a small increase.

But then, as civilization develops, mass small families become increasingly common. This is primarily due to the fact that the entire way of life of a person in our era is associated with non-family activities, and the role of the family in the life of an individual is gradually decreasing, which will be discussed in the next section.

There are different forms of family. The family was originally represented by an expanded form, and this form was most common for thousands of years. An extended family consists of several nuclear families, and a nuclear family is a family consisting only of parents and their children.

But with the advent of industrialization and urbanization, there has been a shift from the “traditional” family to the “modern” family, from the extended family to the nuclear family. Such a transition has a negative impact on the birth rate, since the traditional family is characterized by large families, early and long marriages and childbearing periods, and a ban on abortion and divorce.

Initially, the institutions of education, health care, economics and others were intra-family, but with the process of industrialization, these institutions gradually began to leave the family and became extra-family.

A. Antonov and S. Sorokin in the book “The Fate of the Family in Russia in the 21st Century” name the following differences between an industrial family and an agricultural one:

1. Collapse of the family economy, separation of home and work, non-family employment of parents in the wage labor system with individual wages, disappearance joint activities parents and children everywhere, except for families of farmers, the transition to family self-service, family-centrism is replaced by egocentrism, the well-being of the family begins to consist of the successes of individual family members.

2. In urban families, who make up the majority, the connection with the land is disrupted, the essence of the family home is sharply transformed, the functions of consumption, hygiene and the implementation of physiological processes prevail, psychological unity with the microenvironment is replaced by disengagement, the emphasis is on separation from neighbors, ethnic alienation and T.

3. In the industrial family, kinship is separated from the economic affairs of the family, maximizing individual benefits and economic efficiency outweigh the value of kinship ties.

4. The replacement of a centralized family-kinship system of an extended type with decentralized nuclear families weakened intergenerational ties and the authority of elders, as well as the instructions of parents and kinship regarding the choice of a spouse, taking into account the property status (“open” system of marriage choice while maintaining material interests and the right of inheritance), transition from prohibiting divorces to allowing them, but within the framework of difficult procedures, mainly on the initiative of the husband.

5. Destruction of the system of high birth rate norms in connection with successes in controlling mortality and removing the taboo on preventing and terminating pregnancy, eliminating the need for full use of the reproductive period and hence, weakening the norms of lifelong and early marriage, lifelong childbearing and marriage, softening the norms of sexual behavior outside of marriage and before marriage.

The individualistic values ​​of modern capitalism ran counter to collectivist, family values, and the institution of the family began to gradually die out.

For quite a long time it was believed that the decline in fertility was associated with the economic difficulties that arise with the birth of each subsequent child. When we noticed in the 60s that the birth rate was declining, they began to conduct sociological research, using questionnaires to find out the living conditions of families.

To the question: “why don’t you have more children?”, the following answer options were given:

1) there is not enough salary;

2) problem with living conditions;

3) it is difficult to place children in child care institutions;

4) inconvenient operating mode;

5) lack of help from grandparents;

6) ill health of one of the spouses;

7) ill health of existing children;

8) conflicts between spouses.

In general, they thought that if we help solve these problems, the birth rate will rise. It would seem that everything is clear. But to the question: “Under what conditions would you have another child?” - many, especially those with two children, answered: “under no circumstances.”

Gradually, experts began to come to the conclusion that the decline in fertility cannot be studied only from the point of view of interference. A number of authors (V.A. Borisov, A.N. Antonov, V.M. Medkov, V.N. Arkhangelsky, A.B. Sinelnikov, L.E. Darsky) developed the concept of “family needs for children”. It lies in the fact that spouses do not at all want to have an unlimited number of children. A person’s desire to procreate is not biological, but social character, and manifests itself very differently at different times and under different conditions.

The theory of the institutional crisis of the family explains why the birth rate throughout the world falls to a family of one or two children, which automatically means depopulation. According to this theory, people were interested in having many children only in the pre-industrial era. In those days, the expression “family is the unit of society” was much more consistent with the real state of affairs than in our era. The family really played a role miniature model society.

The family was a production collective (for families of peasants and artisans, who made up the vast majority of the population). Children from a very early age participated in family production and were of undoubted economic value to their parents.

The family was a school in which children received from their parents all the knowledge and work skills they needed for a future independent life.

The family was a social welfare institution. In those days there were no pensions. Therefore, the elderly and disabled people who lost their ability to work could only count on help from their children and grandchildren. Those who did not have a family had to beg.

The family was a place of leisure. As a rule, family members relaxed and had fun together.

In the family, that is, in marriage, sexual needs and the need for children were satisfied. Extramarital affairs were condemned by public opinion. It was very difficult to hide them from others in rural areas or small towns, especially if these connections were long-term and regular.

The presence of children (primarily sons) was a necessary condition in order to be considered a full member of society. Childlessness was condemned by public opinion, and married couples without children suffered psychologically from their inferiority.

Children also performed an emotional and psychological function, since parents experienced joy and a sense of mental comfort from communicating with them.

Thus, with all their shortcomings, traditional families basically coped with their functions: they provided for themselves economically, socialized new generations, took care of the older generation and produced as many children as were enough (even with the then very high mortality rate) for physical survival of humanity. At the same time, the population in different historical periods either grew or was relatively stable.

Of course, during disasters - wars, crop failures, epidemics, etc. - the population declined sharply, but subsequently the high birth rate compensated for all these losses. Under normal conditions, that is, in the absence of such cataclysms, there has never been a steady trend towards a decrease in population due to the excess of mortality over the birth rate for a long time - this has become possible only in our era.

With the advent of industrialization, the situation changed dramatically. The family lost its production functions and ceased to be a labor collective. Family members - husband, wife and grown-up children (the use of child labor was especially characteristic of the era of early capitalism) begin to work outside the home. Each of them receives an individual wages, independent of the composition of the family and its presence in general.

Accordingly, there is no need for a sovereign head of the family as the head of family production.

In addition, the increasing complexity of knowledge necessary for socialization and subsequent labor activity, leads to an extension of the training period. If in a traditional peasant family already 7-year-old children became good helpers for parents, then in a modern urban family children go to school until they are 17-18 years old, and if they then enter colleges and universities, they remain dependent on their parents until they are 22-23 or more years old.

But even after they start working, they do not give their earnings to their parents and generally leave the parental family at the first opportunity. Their desire for separation is especially intensified after marriage, and in contrast to the era of majorat and minorat, when the son who inherited the property remained with his parents, all children separated and only housing difficulties could prevent this (which is very typical for our country).

So, in the pre-industrial era, the economic component of the need for children played an important role. But if he were the only one, the birth rate today would drop to zero. Economic value of children modern conditions is expressed not even by zero, but by a negative value, and a considerable one at that.

The emotional and psychological component of the need for family and children is that family and children give a person emotional satisfaction. In marital relationships, this satisfaction manifests itself in the sexual and psychological spheres. Communication between parents and children brings joy and fills life with meaning.

That is why children do not stop being born even when, from an economic point of view, they no longer bring income to their parents, but, on the contrary, only losses.

Demographic policy that uses only economic levers (benefits and allowances for families with several children, taxes on childlessness) has never produced lasting results. Although quite popular "concept of obstacles to childbirth" widespread, including in scientific circles. It is dominated by the opinion that the birth rate is too low due to difficult material living conditions.

It follows from this that it is necessary to alleviate these conditions by providing families with a small child or several children with various benefits and allowances, and the birth rate will increase so much that the threat of depopulation will be eliminated. This point of view is based only on everyday logic and “common sense” considerations, but is not supported by statistics. A low birth rate, which does not provide even simple replacement of generations, is observed in all economically prosperous Western countries. The decline in the birth rate itself occurs not only in conditions of an economic crisis, as is the case in present-day Russia, but also in conditions of economic recovery.

Two centuries have passed since demographers became aware of the feedback paradox. When the birth rate was very high and its artificial limitation in marriage was not practiced, the average number of children born in families of all social groups differed little, and the difference between them was associated mainly with differences in the average age at first marriage among women belonging to different social groups. groups. The average number of surviving children also depended on social differences in mortality. The decline in child mortality began earlier among the most educated, cultural and affluent groups of the population.

Therefore, in these groups (earlier than in others), parents became confident that all their children would survive and began to practice artificial birth control. The birth rate decreases first among the social elite, as well as among the intelligentsia, then among workers, and only lastly among peasants. At a time when society as a whole is undergoing a transition from high level fertility to low, the effect of the “feedback” mechanism becomes most noticeable. However, after the process of declining fertility spreads to all social groups, and its level no longer ensures simple replacement of generations, this feedback weakens and may disappear altogether.

Some authors, resorting to data manipulation, tried to prove that in this case the feedback is replaced by a direct one, and rich families have, on average, more children than poor ones. But even when such differences appear in the average number of children between families belonging to different social groups, these differences remain small and unimportant, since none of these groups is no longer able to reproduce itself naturally. In such conditions, it does not really matter in which social groups of the population the birth rate is higher and in which it is lower, since in all groups it is still below the line of simple generational replacement.

In addition to the concept of interference, there is concept of child-centrism(its author is the French scientist A. Landry, and the most active supporter in our country is A.G. Vishnevsky). The child becomes the center of the modern family, which presupposes one child - this is the concept of child-centrism. Still, regardless of the different points of view of demographers, one thing can be admitted - the current family does not think about the death of their children. If previously there was a very high probability of death of young children, now few people take into account that a son or daughter will die before their parents. If the countless media reports about accidents made sure to include the family circumstances of the victims and mention the episodes when they were the only children of their parents, many families would understand that one child is too few.

One of the main factors in the decline in the birth rate is the destruction of the traditional institution of marriage as a contract in which the husband undertakes to support the family, and the wife to bear children and run the household. Now sexual and friendly communication is possible without joint housekeeping, obligations, etc. Illegitimate (formally) children in many countries of Western Europe make up from a third to a half of all births, in Russia - almost 30%. Everywhere, the out-of-wedlock birth rate is growing, but its growth does not compensate for the fall in the marital birth rate—in general, the birth rate is falling.

So the relationship between the problem of declining birth rates and the destruction of marriage is very strong. But in our time there is no direct connection between the birth rate and death rate. In modern Russia, population decline is determined not so much by high mortality as by low birth rate. The nature of the replacement of generations depends on mortality only when the level of the latter is high in childhood and youth, and a significant part of each generation does not live to see the average age of the parents at the birth of children. Nowadays, more than 95% of born girls survive to this age.

A further reduction in mortality is extremely important for humanitarian and economic reasons, but has little effect on the nature of the replacement of generations. With a total fertility rate of 1.2-1.3 children, which is what is observed in today’s Russia, the population will decline, even if average duration life will reach 80 years. Therefore, in order to increase the birth rate to a level that ensures at least simple replacement of generations, it is necessary to influence not only the economic component, but also the social and emotional-psychological components.

The nineties were a difficult time, and writing about them is difficult because of the well-established clichés. One of these clichés is the demographic catastrophe of the 90s.

What really happened?

In the early 1990s, the number of deaths sharply increased and life expectancy fell. The fact itself is very regrettable, but in order to judge it, one must see it in a longer historical perspective. Since Brezhnev came to power in the USSR in 1964, a stable unfavorable trend in mortality growth has developed in Russia - on the graph it corresponds to the trend line of 1964-1984 indicated by red dots. This trend was broken with the rise of Gorbachev and the start of the anti-alcohol campaign, and the number of deaths fell sharply. When the anti-alcohol campaign came to an end, there was a natural compensatory rise in mortality, which already in 1994 was replaced by a decrease. The 1998 default again led to an increase in mortality that continued until 2003, but it can be said that all this time the indicators fluctuated around the trend set in Soviet times, and only after 2003 did Russia move away from this trajectory.

(Figure 1. Actual number of deaths in Russia in 1964-2012 (green line) and trend line 1964-1984)

The absolute number of deaths is a visual indicator, but not very correct, since it depends on the age structure and population size, and both change all the time. But the correct indicator, which does not depend on either the size or the structure of the population - life expectancy - paints approximately the same picture: fluctuations around the “Soviet” trajectory, with the “Yeltsin” loss being less than the “Gorbachev” gain (Fig. 2).

(Figure 2. Life expectancy in Russia in 1964-2012 (blue line) and trend line 1964-1984)

No one denies the increase in mortality in the early 90s. But if this short-term (it ended already in 1994) surge is called a disaster, then what can we call the steady 20-year degradation of 1964-1984? In addition, one more important detail must be taken into account. The total number of deaths depends largely on the number of elderly people - 60 years and older. Since the late 1980s, representatives of the first non-war generations, born in the late 1920s, began to enter this age group. There were much more of them than representatives of earlier generations, a huge part of whom died on the fields of war and, therefore, did not live to see their old age. So the number of deaths in the 90s should have increased for this reason.

Now let's turn to fertility. The number of births in Russia fell sharply after 1987, which was largely programmed by the fall in the number of births in the 1960s. This was the second wave of the “echo of war.” In the 60s, children of generations born during the war years were born; they were few in number. In the 90s, when they themselves became parents, they had few children (Fig. 3). The 90s themselves have nothing to do with it. But in addition, a restructuring of the age-specific birth rate model contributed to the decline in the number of births in the 90s.

(Figure 3. Number of births in Russia in 1960-2013)

The decline in the number of births in Russia reached its bottom in 1999, after which growth began (which is also visible in Fig. 3). This growth is ensured mainly by three age groups of women: 25-29 years old, 30-34 years old, 35-39 years old. In 2013, they gave birth to almost 70% of all children born in Russia. How did fertility behave in these key age groups in the 90s?

At first, the birth rate in them fell, the decline began after 1987, but in 1993 it had already ended, after which weak signs of growth appeared, and since the late 90s the growth has accelerated and continues to this day, determining the positive trends of recent years (Fig. 4) .

(Figure 4. Age-specific fertility rates in Russia in 1958-2013)

True, there is another important – once the most important – age group of women: 20-24 years. The decline in the birth rate in this group largely predetermined the decline in the number of births in the 90s. Unlike the older groups, where the decline stopped in 1993, in this group the decline continued until the mid-2000s and has not yet given way to growth. But already in 2000, the negative impact of this decline was neutralized by an increase in the birth rate at other ages, and the number of births in the country began to increase. In 2008, women aged 20-24 gave way to women aged 25-29 as the main birth group.

If we consider the whole picture as a whole, we see that in the 90s a restructuring of the age model of fertility began and continued in the 2000s, expressed in a shift in births to later maternal ages. This restructuring has a deep social meaning; it reflects a different strategy than before for people to plan their own lives, better suited to the new conditions of their demographic existence. It is spontaneously chosen by millions of people in all countries. In Europe, this happened back in the 60s and 70s, and the fact that this did not happen in Russia then is explained, I think, by the social stagnation of 1964-1984. When the situation changed, Russian women followed the same path as European women. The fact that they began to plan their lives more consciously is indirectly confirmed by an important achievement of the 90s - a sharp decrease in the number of abortions - which was not achieved during Soviet times (Fig. 5). It has clearly manifested itself since the very beginning of the 90s and continues now.

(Figure 5. Decline in the number of abortions in Russia)

A decrease in the number of births and an increase in the number of deaths in the early 90s led to the fact that the number of deaths became more number births, and natural population growth for the first time in the post-war years was replaced by its natural decline (the “Russian cross” appeared). Natural population decline is an extremely undesirable thing, but there is no reason to attribute it to the “catastrophe” of the 90s. Russia's population has not reproduced itself since the mid-1960s and has grown only due to "demographic inertia" accumulated in the age structure. The appearance of natural decline was inevitable and was predicted by official Soviet forecasts. True, it was expected not in the 90s, but in the first decade of the new century. Perhaps the socio-economic crisis of the early 90s somewhat brought the appearance of natural decline closer, but nothing more. Due to the structural characteristics of the Russian population in the “zero” years, the natural population decline decreased, gradually disappeared, and even a small natural increase appeared. But this is most likely a temporary phenomenon; it will be very difficult to get rid of the natural population decline in Russia - its strong long-term perspective was laid not in the 90s, but much earlier.