senheiser
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Russia's Total Fertility Rate Is Rapidly Converging With America's - Forbes
In the long term any country’s demographic trajectory is ultimately reliant on its Total Fertility Rate (TFR) the number of children born to the average woman. Mortality matters, but if a country has a super low TFR it can have the best healthcare in the entire world and nothing will prevent its population from collapsing. Anyone who doubts this should consider the example of Japan, which boasts extremely high life expectancy but which is nonetheless caught in a demographic “death spiral.” Despite it’s excellent healthcare and the outstanding health of its people, Japan’s TFR has been so low for so long that the number of births is in unavoidable decline. Unless there is a substantial change in its fertility patterns, Japan’s population will shrink indefinitely.
That might sound like a bit of a digression, but I’m astounded at the number of people who respond to the articles I’ve written on Russian demography with arguments that place an extremely high emphasis on average life expectancy and the functioning of the healthcare system (two areas in which Russia fares rather poorly). It is possible of course for a country to have such a low level of life expectancy and such a high level of mortality that they conspire to outweigh its TFR, but in order for this to be the case people would, on average, have to be dying before they have children. I don’t think there’s a single country in the world where that is actually the case, and it is certainly not the case in Russia, where men live until 65 and women life until about 74 (that is, several decades after they have left reproductive age).
And when you take a look at Russia’s TFR you see that it is rapidly converging with the United States’
What is the significance of this? Well I personally think it shows that some of the “last man in Russia” theories about the immanent doom of the Russian Federation are rather simplistic. You often hear that “every year, fewer and fewer people in Russia are having children” but this is not true. Over the past fifteen years Russia has seen a tremendous and long-term increase in its TFR, an increase that has played a vital role in stemming the population losses it suffered during the chaotic 1990′s. I’ve read the relevant UN demographic forecasts and I can state with full confidence that literally no one foresaw such a robust improvement in Russian fertility patterns: in its magnitude and duration it has consistently surpassed even the most optimistic projections.
I would also say that the above graph should give some pause to the “demographic exceptionalaists” who argue that the United States, by virtue of its superior fertility, will avoid the travails of Old Europe. No we shouldn’t panic (Jonathan Last’s book is a great example of how not to think about the relevant trends) but America’s recent downturn in fertility will exacerbate some genuine and difficult challenges related to pension and retirement systems. America’s future economic challenges, then, are simply marginally less severe versions of those facing Russia: how to make the books balance when they are fewer and fewer workers and more and more retirees.
In 2014, despite huge and growing political differences, the simply reality is that Russian and American childbearing patterns are remarkably similar. Keep this in mind the next time you hear either about the “dying bear” or about American demographic supremacy.
In the long term any country’s demographic trajectory is ultimately reliant on its Total Fertility Rate (TFR) the number of children born to the average woman. Mortality matters, but if a country has a super low TFR it can have the best healthcare in the entire world and nothing will prevent its population from collapsing. Anyone who doubts this should consider the example of Japan, which boasts extremely high life expectancy but which is nonetheless caught in a demographic “death spiral.” Despite it’s excellent healthcare and the outstanding health of its people, Japan’s TFR has been so low for so long that the number of births is in unavoidable decline. Unless there is a substantial change in its fertility patterns, Japan’s population will shrink indefinitely.
That might sound like a bit of a digression, but I’m astounded at the number of people who respond to the articles I’ve written on Russian demography with arguments that place an extremely high emphasis on average life expectancy and the functioning of the healthcare system (two areas in which Russia fares rather poorly). It is possible of course for a country to have such a low level of life expectancy and such a high level of mortality that they conspire to outweigh its TFR, but in order for this to be the case people would, on average, have to be dying before they have children. I don’t think there’s a single country in the world where that is actually the case, and it is certainly not the case in Russia, where men live until 65 and women life until about 74 (that is, several decades after they have left reproductive age).
And when you take a look at Russia’s TFR you see that it is rapidly converging with the United States’
What is the significance of this? Well I personally think it shows that some of the “last man in Russia” theories about the immanent doom of the Russian Federation are rather simplistic. You often hear that “every year, fewer and fewer people in Russia are having children” but this is not true. Over the past fifteen years Russia has seen a tremendous and long-term increase in its TFR, an increase that has played a vital role in stemming the population losses it suffered during the chaotic 1990′s. I’ve read the relevant UN demographic forecasts and I can state with full confidence that literally no one foresaw such a robust improvement in Russian fertility patterns: in its magnitude and duration it has consistently surpassed even the most optimistic projections.
I would also say that the above graph should give some pause to the “demographic exceptionalaists” who argue that the United States, by virtue of its superior fertility, will avoid the travails of Old Europe. No we shouldn’t panic (Jonathan Last’s book is a great example of how not to think about the relevant trends) but America’s recent downturn in fertility will exacerbate some genuine and difficult challenges related to pension and retirement systems. America’s future economic challenges, then, are simply marginally less severe versions of those facing Russia: how to make the books balance when they are fewer and fewer workers and more and more retirees.
In 2014, despite huge and growing political differences, the simply reality is that Russian and American childbearing patterns are remarkably similar. Keep this in mind the next time you hear either about the “dying bear” or about American demographic supremacy.
