RSSThe number of fertile women will decrease in the whole of Eastern Europe, due to the 1990’s fall in births, today the girls born in 1980s (when there was a baby boom) are still having kids. In about 5-10 years, the real problems will start all over EE. It will be interesting to see how that will affect social trends, labour, family formation, etc. Seems like a really serious trend on a big scale. However, we can hope that the fertility quotient will rise (even if the actual number of births will be smaller). If Russia could push the fertility rate from 1.6-1.7 to 1.8, that would be nice.
Btw, according to the latest polls, 77% of Russians consider themselves subjectively happy – seems like a rise from 2011, when it was 67%:
http://wciom.ru/index.php?id=459&uid=114002
The trends over the recent years have been positive indeed, especially the decrease in male mortality, it can’t be stressed enough how positive that is, because in a chain reaction it will positively affect other aspects of life, such as family formation and productivity. Improving the male health, as well as birthrates, was long due in Russia and other FSU countries. Natalist policies do work. Also, this increase of fertility (TFR) may luckily coincide with the rather big number of women born in 1980s. Russia and FSU saw a baby boom in the 1980s when the government stimulated births by giving generous benefits to mothers / families with kids. Thus, the TFR rose to about 2 (as high as 2.2 in 1987). Women born at that time are now in their most fertile age and are having kids (and will continue for another 10-15 years). This coincides with Putin’s natalist program. This will save Russia from the doom that was predicted. This will also make the coming demographic hole caused by the 1990s shock therapies less traumatic (hopefully). The most important thing was to take advantage of the bulk of the women born in 1980s (not to lose the potential future people from that baby boom).