The radical transformations of the fifteen countries of the former Soviet Union (FSU), along with those of the transition economies of Eastern Europe, are producing demographic trends never before seen in developed countries. These include declining birth rates in all fifteen countries, plunging some of them to among the lowest levels in the world and the lowest levels ever measured for populations of these sizes. Death rates have risen in all 15 countries, causing declines in life expectancy, a reversal of the trend found in most countries of the world, developed or developing. Also, the dissolution of the U.S.S.R. set off a great stream of migration. When the fifteen states became sovereign countries, there were 43 million persons who found themselves living outside the country of their titular nationality.
The combination of declining crude birth rates and rising crude death rates has led to a decline in population ("negative rates of natural increase") in the low-fertility transition economies, as the number of deaths exceeded the number of births. In 1994 there were only ten countries in the world whose population declined because of negative rates of natural increase. Five are former Soviet republics_Belarus, Estonia, Latvia, Russia, and Ukraine_and five are in Europe_Bulgaria, Croatia, Germany, Hungary, and Romania. All these countries are either partly or entirely formerly planned economies.
These demographic trends, which include steep declines in marriage rates, are tangible evidence of societies' responses to the great uncertainty brought about by the breakup of the Soviet Union and the difficult transitions to market economies. Previous societies have responded to periods of economic deprivation and social upheaval with a reduction in childbearing but not to the extent that some of the FSU countries are experiencing.
Variations Within Overall Decline
One reason for the breakup of the Soviet Union was the great cultural diversity found within its borders. This was partly reflected in demographic differences found among the former Soviet states. Cultural traditions for developing large or small families, for example, existed prior to the creation of the Soviet Union and were only partially influenced by policies of the Soviet government.
Countries of the FSU, when considered in light of their current patterns of natural increase and migration, can be broadly classified as follows (table 1):
The three Slavic countries_Belarus, Russia, and Ukraine_all have net immigration, offset in Russia and Ukraine by negative rates of natural increase. Over the six-year period from the last Soviet census in January 1989 to the beginning of 1995, the net immigration to Russia offset the negative natural increase by two times so that Russia's population increased over the period, though over the last three years it has been declining. Ukraine's negative natural increase over the period just about equaled the positive immigration so that the total population declined slightly during the same period, although its population growth has also been negative recently. The three Baltic countries_Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania_have experienced negative natural increase coupled with outmigration, largely of Russians. Estonia and Latvia have both had negative rates of natural increase since 1989. Lithuania, with its more rural population and a smaller Russian population than the other two Baltic countries, has only recently shown a negative natural increase and had a smaller rate of outmigration. Five countries with large Muslim populations_Azerbaijan, Kyrgyz Republic, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, and Uzbekistan_continued to have high rates of natural increase, though slightly lower than before 1989 and, with the exception of Turkmenistan, experienced net outmigration. Since 1989 Uzbekistan, the most populous of the Central Asia countries, grew the most in absolute terms of any of the FSU countries, adding nearly 3 million persons. Turkmenistan continues to have the highest rate of natural increase and the highest rate of total population growth of any state of the FSU. Two countries_Georgia and Kazakhstan_had a total natural increase that was roughly offset by outmigration to produce stagnant growth. Two countries_Armenia and Moldova_both showed moderate natural increase, and net immigration (see table 1). Birth Rates Slump
In some western FSU countries, populations have responded to the pervasive uncertainty following the breakup with a rapid decline in childbearing to levels never before recorded in populations of this size. Just before the breakup, the Soviet Union had a birthrate slightly higher than levels in the industrialized nations, due primarily to a range of pronatalist social policies. But, since 1989 the crude birthrate has declined by 25 to 42 percent in the European countries of the FSU and between 10 and 20 percent in the Central Asian countries (table 2).
A more telling statistic is the total fertility rate (TFR)_the number of children a woman would have if she passed through her childbearing years and had children at the rate of the current age-specific birth rates. A TFR of about 2.1 indicates that the population is just exactly replacing itself. In 1990 the Baltic and Slavic countries had TFRs at or just below replacement level. (The average TFR for Europe was 1.7 and for the United States 2.1 in the same year.) Since then the TFRs of nearly all FSU countries have fallen, with the rate falling by as much as 30 percent or more in a few countries. It is not just the rate of decline that is astonishing but the levels to which the rates have sunk. At present the Baltic and Slavic countries are well below replacement level, with Russia's rate of 1.4 in 1993 placing it alongside such other low-fertility countries as Germany, Greece, Italy, and Spain.
Reasons for the plunging birth rates in transition economies include:
Uncertainty about economic conditions and social policies that affect family welfare and childbearing. Changing relative cost of having and raising children. Increased poverty. Dismantling of pronatalist income and welfare policies. Increasing availability of modern contraceptive means other than abortion. In the western FSU countries, a smaller cohort passing through the childbearing years (see box). The marriage shock. The number of marriages has declined precipitously in most FSU countries, with declines of more than 30 percent in the Baltic countries during 1990-93. Although the availability of modern contraceptives is increasing, abortion remains the most prevalent means of birth control, and is on the rise. In six countries_Belarus, Estonia, Kazakhstan, Latvia, Russia, and Ukraine, there are more than 100 abortions performed for every 100 births. Russia continues to have one of the highest abortion rates in the world with 216.5 abortions recorded for every 100 live births.
Death Rates Surge
Crude death rates have increased in all FSU countries, but especially in the western FSU countries, where the death rate has increased on average by around 25 percent over the past five years (by 35 percent in Latvia and 45 percent in Russia). Ten FSU countries saw a decline in male life expectancy and five recorded decreases in female life expectancy. Male life expectancy in Russia declined by over six years, from 64.4 to 57.3 years, while female life expectancy declined by over three years, from 74.4 to 71.9 years. The current life expectancy for males in Russia is on a level with that in Indonesia, Nicaragua, and Pakistan_all countries with significantly lower per capita income. The male-female gap in life expectancy widened over this period in every country of the FSU_region already marked by high gaps in male-female life expectancy .
According to a 1994 UNICEF report "Crisis in Mortality, Health and Nutrition," Economies in Transition Series, Regional Monitoring Report no. 2, August, the upsurge in mortality rates can be attributed to:
Increased poverty, which has led to poorer nutrition. Deterioration of the health care and sanitation systems. Increased social stress brought on by the uncertainties of transition. Middle-age men have shown the highest increases in mortality over the period. Nearly half of the increase in the death rate in Russia over the period was due, according to the UNICEF report, to as "an epidemic of heart and circulatory diseases." External and other causes (including murder, suicide, accidental deaths, and poisoning) explain most of the other half.
Split Along Ethnicity Lines
The former Soviet Union broke apart along its ethnic seams, sociologist Michael Sacks has observed. When the Soviet Union dissolved, 43 million persons were living outside their ethnic homelands, a figure that includes only members of the titular nationalities of the new states. The size of the migration streams could change dramatically the result of "homegrown" demographic trends. The changing ethnic composition of the new states could have a lasting impact on their political development.
At the beginning of 1989 Russia and Ukraine had the largest numbers of their titular nationalities_25 million Russians, 6 million Ukrainians_residing in other states of the "near abroad." Armenia, Belarus, Kazakhstan, Tajikstan, and Uzbekistan each had more than one million members of their majority nationality living elsewhere. Armenia had the highest percentage, with one-third of all Armenians living outside of Armenia.
Russia and Ukraine have been the primary destinations of interstate migrants, with the countries of Central Asia being the largest sources of the outmigrants. It is important to note that these trends did not begin with the breakup of the FSU but were certainly accelerated by it. The trends of outmigration from Central Asia and the Transcaucasus and immigration to Russia and Ukraine were going on during the 1970s and 1980s. The only states that incurred a reversal of migration trends were the Baltic states which had immigration during the past two decades but are now experiencing outmigration. To date, about 10 percent of all Russians living in the "near abroad" have returned to Russia. The same is true of most other ethnic groups.
Great Depression Dwarfed
The situation in the FSU can be compared to that of the United States in the early 1930s during the Great Depression when:
Crude birth rate declined some 15 percent between 1930 and 1933. The cohort of women whose prime childbearing years coincided with the Great Depression had only slightly fewer children, 2.4 on average, than the cohorts immediately preceding and following, which each had about 2.8 children. The crude death rate did not show any perceptible increase and continued on the gradual decline it had been on since the beginning of the century. Life expectancy did decline but not until the Depression was over. It climbed from 1929 on, reached a peak of 63.3 in 1933 and declined to a low of 58.5 years in 1936. The demographic shock experienced in the FSU countries greatly surpassed that seen in the U.S. population in the 1930s. In the FSU countries crude birth rates have fallen by 25 to 40 percent.
In analyzing these differences, it can be argued that the U.S. loss of output was much less (about 30 percent between 1929 and 1933), than the declines suffered by some FSU countries. And in the United States. Although the free market system was certainly questioned during the Depression and emerged in a very different form, it was not discarded entirely as were central planning and the one-party system in the FSU countries.
Temporary Aberration or Permanent Trends?
Are these demographic trends a temporary response to economic depression or do they represent a shift to new, permanently lower levels under the market system? Russia has already shown some signs of reversing the downward slide of negative natural increase as the number of births increased slightly in 1994 (to 1,397,000 from 1,379,000 in 1993). However, as Nick Eberstat stated in his analysis of Eastern Germany's demographic response to the fall of the Berlin Wall, "the path back from Communism is terra incognita" (Transition, February-March 1994.)
Population projections are a necessary input into labor force predictions, social security financing, and other types of economic planning. Russia's current trends will have the effect of initially lowering the dependency ratio, but it will rise again in the next century as the smaller, young cohorts enter the work force. Whether these demographic trends will persist has a lot to do with prospects for recovery in FSU.
The author is in the Statistical Unit, Country Departments III and IV, Europe and Central Asia Region, the World Bank.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------- ----
Kinks and Echoes in Russia's Age Pyramid
The January 1, 1994 age-sex pyramid of Russia's population graphically illustrates both the past and future of the Russian population. The recent plunge in birth rates is clearly seen at the bottom with each of the last seven, single-year cohorts being smaller than the one immediately preceding it. The general shape is that of a steep pyramid, an indication that the population is growing, but growing slowly.
Many of the "kinks", or sharp contractions in the pyramid reflect either great losses of life or periods where fertility declined. Each of these relatively small cohorts in turn produces a smaller cohort as it passes through its own reproductive years, producing an "echo" effect in later generations. This is part of the explanation for the most recent cohort being relatively small compared with that immediately before. The cohort currently in the prime childbearing years, those centered around is 25, are relatively small. This group in turn was the product of the cohort in the echo centered around age 50. Those currently age 50 were born during World War II, another period of high mortality and reduced family formation.
The current, newly born cohort will have various effects on society and the demand and supply of social goods as it passes through the life cycle. For instance, the number of children in preschools has declined from a high of 9.8 million in 1988 to 6.8 million in 1993, a decline of more than 30 percent. This obviously means a smaller demand for classrooms and teachers. If pedagogical institutions had been training new teachers based on the expected upward trend implied by the increasingly large cohorts from about age 30 to age 10, there would be a vast oversupply of preschool and primary school teachers. Twenty years from now the newly born, very small cohort will have far fewer entrants into the labor force and, while in their own childbearing years, will in turn produce a smaller cohort.
If this pyramid were folded in half vertically, one would clearly see the high ratio of females to males in the older ages. This is true in most societies but is especially pronounced in Russia where the males have felt the brunt of the demographic disasters throughout the country's history. In the cohorts over age 70, there are more than three females to every male.
The other Slavic countries and Moldova exhibit the same general shape to their population pyramids with roughly similar growth rates and the same kinked pattern resulting from World War II and its echoes. The Central Asian states' pyramids are shaped more conventionally with a wider base indicative of both a faster-growing population and a much larger portion of their populations in the younger cohorts.