Demographic situation and market rationality
07/07/2011“The future of a nation depends not on the number of cars but on the number of baby-strollers”.
Urho Kekkonen (1900 – 1986), President of Finland
The results of the All-Russian representative survey conducted by the service SREDA (field work: Public Opinion Foundation “PENTA”, sample 1500 people)
For normal reproduction of the population, the required ratio, by various estimates, is 2.15 – 2.7 children per woman. According to the survey, 10% of the respondents had three children or more, 32% had one child, and 34% had two children. Interestingly, those who may be described as ‘the Russian middle class,’ as a rule are among the ‘small families’ (meaning two or less children) group. In contrast, those with large families are in the majority poor and poorly educated people, many of who live in rural areas. Considerably more common among parents of middle and large families are … retirees.
July 8th – the All-Russian Day of Family, Love and Fidelity. On this day the Russian Orthodox Church commemorates the Saintly Peter and Fevronia of Murom, the embodiment of an elevated marital relationship.
This festivity is one more reason to think about the future of our country. According to the results of forecasts made by Russian and overseas experts, by 2050 Russia’s population could decrease by 25- 40 million people. Scientists are debating about the reliability of these forecasts. According to the head of the Department of Family Sociology and Demography of MSU, Professor A.I. Antonov, by 2050, if no active demographic policies are in place, the country’s population may fall as low as 80 million people. The one thing that is obvious –the population of Russia is decreasing.
As shown by the All-Russian poll, Russians are not very eager to improve this demographic situation. Only 37% of respondents say that they would like to have more children. At that, among those, the notable majority are people with higher education. But this segment does not generally have many children. Rather, the segment that more commonly has more children are parents with only lower school education or less.
Some anxiety is caused by the fact that only half of young people said they “would like to have more children.” At the same time, these young people are optimistic about the future: 84% believe that when they grow old their children (prospective children, that is) will help them. Only 5% believe that there will be no support from the children.
More likely to have one child or no children at all are well-off respondents belonging to the middle class, and, by Russian standards, with quite a good income. More likely to say that at the moment they are going to stop at one child – non-manual workers and urban residents.
24% of Russians do not have children. Curiously enough, there are nearly twice as many childless men (31%) than childless women (18%).
The majority of families with more than two children are found among Russians over 45 years old and retired people – that may be due to a more even demographic situation in the Soviet Union, when the country was experiencing population growth (in 1992, a decline in population began). And older people are less likely to expect support from their adult children and are more likely to admit to having had abortions.
Russians with large families can be divided into two unequal groups. One small group consists of successful people –entrepreneurs and executives. In their families, they often have three or more children, they often say that they want to have more children, and more oftenthey hope for their children’s support when they are old.
The other, major group of parents with many children is low-income citizens (one in five large families does not have enough money even for food). This segment, in contrast, does not expect support from their children in their old age. Large families are more likely to be found in villages. In these families, often no one has higher education. They often do not believe in miracles, and often describe themselves as unhappy and sick.
Respondents with three or more children are more likely to say that schools need a new subject, Basics of Orthodox Culture, and watch the TV show “Word of the Pastor”. Half of them agree that media can be censored by the Russian Orthodox Church. Almost half of large families support the party “Edinaya Rossiya”.
“I would like to have more children”.
Poll results suggest a possible inverse relationship between the number of children and education level. Thus, although educated Russians often say they would like to have more children, among them there is actually the lowest percentage of large families. But those with education below high school, while on the most part say they do not want more children, they still give births: among poorly educated respondents is the largest percentage of large families. With this said, they rarely hope for support from their children in their old age.
With regard to the federal districts, childless Russians are more likely to live in the Central Federal District; those with three or more children – in Volga Federal District. Additionally, people in Central Russia generally find it more difficult to decide on a response to this question of whether they want to have more children. Respondents living in South and the North Caucasus federal districts are more likely to speak about their desire to have more children and more often expect their children’s support in their old age. Most people who say they do not want more children live in the Siberian and Ural federal districts. Residents of the Urals more frequently than others do not believe that when they reach their old age that their children will help them.
The survey revealed a significant correlation between the number of children with the resource typology of the Russian population developed in 2011 by researchers of the Fund “Obschestvennoe Mnenie” (“Public Opinion”) (http://bd.fom.ru/pdf/d25rtrn11.pdf ). “High-resources” and “average-resources” citizens (living in urban areas, with higher or secondary education, good material income) – most often are parents of one child or no children. On the other hand, the “low-resources” respondents (Russians with low education and low material wealth: workers, unemployed, rural population and residents of small towns) often have two, three or more children.
A definite confirmation of the thesis that the rise of market rationality disrupts the basis of population growth can be found in the example of Moscow residents. It would seem that having relatively high living standards, as well as relatively more opportunities for childcare (including access to high quality health care and education), that they could afford to have more children than on average. However, the reality is exactly the opposite: Muscovites are leading in number of ‘small families’ (two or less children or childless), do not particularly want to have more children, and least of all rely on help from their children in their old age.
Researchers associate the fertility decline in Europe with the secularization of society 1. But in Russia, even the Orthodox, even church-going Orthodox – are parents of large families no more than on average, contrary to the popular stereotype of “large Orthodox families”. It seems that after all it’s not religion but market rationality that in the first place determines the reproductive motivation in Russia. More often than on average Orthodox respondents have families with two children of (Orthodox are somewhat more likely to admit that they have resorted to abortion).
However, there is an exception: the Muslims. Almost one in four Muslim respondents has three or more children, and 58% of Muslims would like to have more children (the total percentage of Russians who would like to have more children is 37%).
1 “R. Lestege, a famous Belgian demographer, said that today’s changing family structures and the decline in birth rates is nothing new: it is the continuing alienation of the western system of ideas from the Christian values: altruism, and responsibility, and a movement towards the aggressive “secular individualism”. Such secularization and reduced commitment to religion are the causes of the birth rate’s decline “, – says Alexander Antonov in his article “Demographics in the Era of Depopulation «, Demographic Studies Journal, issue 1, 01.02.2010.
