Los Angeles Times - August 21, 1999
DEMOGRAPHICS In Postponing Census, Russia Reveals Fears About Its Future By MAURA REYNOLDS, Times Staff Writer
MOSCOW--Don't go looking for trouble, a Russian saying goes. These days, the Kremlin appears to be applying the lesson in an unusual area: the census.
Russia has postponed--indefinitely--a national census scheduled for this year. It would have been the first full census since the breakup of the Soviet Union and was expected to confirm demographers' worst fears: that Russians are dying off so fast and giving birth so infrequently that the population may shrink by nearly half in the next 50 years.
Government officials say they have canceled the census for this year because they can't come up with the $140 million it would cost to send surveyors door to door to count heads.
"A census is a luxury that Russia cannot afford today," said Irina A. Zbarskaya, head of the population statistics department of the State Statistics Committee. "It turns out that we are too poor to count our own people."
But many others suspect that at least part of the motivation is a reluctance to face what a census is likely to show.
"Are they afraid to find out what has happened to their population?" asked Murray Feshbach, a U.S. demographer specializing in Russia. "I think the answer is yes."
In the last 10 years, Russia has suffered what is arguably the world's worst postwar demographic catastrophe. The death rate has climbed from 11 deaths per 1,000 people in 1991 to 15 per 1,000 last year. Life expectancy has fallen, especially for men, plunging from 65 years in 1987 to a low of 58 in 1995.
Meanwhile, women are giving birth at a rate far below the population maintenance level: For every 15 people who die, only nine are born. (In the United States, the numbers are the opposite, with about 15 people born for every nine who die.)
The result is that Russia's population has been dropping steadily since the 1991 Soviet collapse, falling from about 148 million in 1991 to about 146 million now. That's a contraction of 250,000 people a year--nearly as many as live in Anaheim.
Moreover, the full impact of this decline has been partially masked by a relatively high rate of immigration into Russia, primarily by ethnic Russians moving back from other former Soviet republics at a rate of 200,000 to 300,000 a year. When net migration is taken into consideration, Russia's population appears to have been shrinking even faster, by well over half a million people a year.
Scientists blame the decline on social stress and bad public health. They point in particular to an increase in alcohol consumption, which contributes to high rates of accidents and heart disease--which together account for 70% of men's deaths in Russia. Feshbach estimates that if current trends continue, Russia's population in 2050 will be only 80 million--a 45% drop.
Even without a new census, the government can provide population estimates by using birth and death records to adjust data from the 1989 census. But over time, there is no substitute for a household survey, which the United Nations recommends every 10 years.
"Once a mistake is made somewhere, it compounds itself year by year, and the gap between the estimates and reality grows wider and wider," Zbarskaya acknowledged. "Only the census is a real count--the rest are just estimates."
Inaccurate population data lead to bad government policies, making it impossible for authorities to efficiently allocate funds, plan for schools and hospitals, assess food and energy needs, and perhaps even keep voter registration rolls in order. Some political analysts have speculated that without reliable census data, it will be easier for local officials or campaign workers in Russia to falsify voter rolls in critical national elections scheduled for December and June.
Indeed, census data can be very political, and this is not the first time that the Kremlin has balked at counting its citizens. In 1937, after millions in the Soviet Union died from famine and a violent peasant collectivization campaign, dictator Josef Stalin took umbrage at initial census results showing a lower-than-expected rate of population growth and purged the census-takers. A subsequent census, in 1939, is believed to have been largely falsified.
Russian statistics officials say they hope and expect to conduct a new census in 2002 or 2003. Until then, the nation will have to stumble along--as it does so often--with only a vague idea of where it's at and where it's going.