With high death rates and low birth rates, this region is undergoing a unique, late-stage variant of the demographic transition (see Chapter 1). In all but the Caucasian and Central Asian states, populations are shrinking faster than in any world region other than Europe. During the Soviet era, the increase in women’s opportunities to become educated and work outside the home curtailed population growth. Free health care and adequate retirement pensions also helped lower incentives for large families, as people didn’t have to depend on their children for support in old age. Severe housing shortages were an additional disincentive to having children, and many families chose to have only one or two children. All of these factors were leading to slower population during the last years of the Soviet Union, but the population didn’t decline until the economic collapse and the “shock therapy” of the 1990s, which had major social repercussions.

221

By the mid-2000s, the rate of shrinkage had slowed down considerably across the region, and by 2013 Russia’s population was again growing. This growth may not last, as the population decline of the 1990s means that fewer people will be in their reproductive years in the coming decade. However, the dark predictions of demographic collapse that are still common regarding this region probably need to be revised.

Russia has made considerable efforts to fight population decline. Couples are now offered a bonus for having a second child that is equivalent to more than 2 years’ worth of wages for the average Russian. However, similar policies in Europe have been less successful than efforts to address the concerns of career-minded working mothers, who often value access to inexpensive, high-quality day care and longer school days more than they do money. Another questionable policy involves attracting back Russians and their dependents who live abroad. In 2007 and 2008, Russia spent $300 million to send emissaries to places like Brazil, Egypt, Germany, and all the post-Soviet states to lure “returnees.” Only 10,300 were recruited.

Much of the reason for the population decline, and possibly the recent slowing of this decline, relates to life expectancy. Life expectancy in the region differs dramatically according to gender, with women living 10 to 12 years longer than men. By comparison, around the world, women live on average only 53 years longer than men. Life expectancy for women changed only marginally after the collapse of the Soviet Union, but life expectancy for men dropped considerably. In Russia, for example, between 1987 and 1994, male life expectancy dropped from 64.9 to 57.6 years. Since then, male life expectancy has recovered somewhat, but at 64 years, it is still the shortest in any developed country. Female life expectancy has held steady at 75 to 76 years throughout this period.

222

Major causes of low life expectancies in the region are the loss of health care, which was usually tied to employment, and the physical and mental distress caused by lost jobs and social disruption. These factors, though, might not explain much of the gender difference in life expectancy since the fall of the Soviet Union, given that women worked outside the home almost as much as men during the Soviet era and seem to have been more likely to have lost jobs during the 1990s. Another possible cause for low male life expectancy is alcohol abuse and alcohol-related accidents and suicides, which are much more common among men. Russia has by far the world’s highest rate of alcohol-related health disorders (1277 per 100,000 people in Russia, compared to 600 per 100,000 people in the United States), and more than half of all deaths among the working-age population are alcohol-related. On the positive side, recent increases in male life expectancy may be a result of declining rates of alcohol poisoning since the mid-2000s. This change is likely an outcome of government and private campaigns to reduce alcohol consumption and improve treatment of alcoholism.

Population pyramids for several countries (Figure 5.21) show the overall population trends in the region and reflect geographic differences in life expectancy and fertility. The pyramids for Belarus and Russia resemble those of European countries (for example, Germany, as shown in Figure 4.21A), but there are also differences. First, they are significantly narrower at the bottom, indicating that birth rates in the last several decades have declined sharply. Because so few children are born, in 20 years there will be few prospective parents, which means that low birth rates and population decline will probably continue into the foreseeable future. Also, the narrower point at the top for males shows their much shorter average life span compared to women.

223

In all countries, there has been a recent rebound in birth rates in the youngest age group, ranging from a slight increase in Russia to a significant rebound in Kazakhstan. Kyrgyzstan’s pyramid indicates a younger population structure, which is common in less affluent economies. In the Central Asian countries, population will likely expand during the next decades.

A broad area of moderately dense population forms an irregular triangle that stretches from Ukraine on the Black Sea north to St. Petersburg on the Baltic Sea and east to Novosibirsk, the largest city in Siberia. In this triangle, settlement is highly urbanized, but the cities are widely dispersed (Figure 5.22).

A secondary spur of dense settlement extends south from Russia into Caucasia, the mountainous region between the Black Sea and the Caspian Sea, where there are several primate cities of well over 1 million people each. In Central Asia, another patch of relatively dense settlement is centered on the cities of Tashkent. Along major Central Asian rivers during the Soviet period, the development of irrigated cotton farming and mineral extraction resulted in patches of high rural density, fueled partly by ethnic Russian immigration.

224