- cross-posted to:
- [email protected]
- cross-posted to:
- [email protected]
Russia has moved to classify key demographic statistics following a dramatic collapse in its birth rate, which has plunged to levels not seen since the late 18th or early 19th century, according to a leading Russian demographer.
For decades, Russia has been experiencing a plunging birth rate and population decline, which appears to have worsened amid its ongoing invasion of Ukraine—with high casualty rates and men fleeing the country to avoid being conscripted to fight.
Projections estimate that Russia’s population will fall to about 132 million in the next two decades. The United Nations has predicted that in a worst-case scenario, by the start of the next century, Russia’s population could almost halve to 83 million.
You must log in or register to comment.
If AI and robots will take over so many jobs, why is a declining birthrate a bad thing, in the long term?
Because current society is built on the assumption that around 4 workers will support 1 person with social benefits like retirement money, healtcare or unemployment benefits. Robots are already used in many factories but don’t pay any of those. The robots will produce goods cheaper than humans, however corporations will own the robots, and still charge you the same price for the goods while receiving a larger margin.
So… you’re saying that… capitalism is the problem???
depends on where its decling, if its only like elderly left and the young not reproducing thats would be a problem.
I don’t think ruzies are worried about technologies they can’t even afford.
Aaah yes “Smakalka”
Kinda rough to have babies if most of your men are being turned into fertilizer.
Invades the breadbasket of Europe, accidentally makes their crops even better.
Russian meat to sunflower oil pipeline
yea putin, fuck the world up and then complain that people are not making kids. we will all die in our own filth when the infrastructure collapses and you can wipe your ass with all that money and power
deleted by creator
yeah! that’s what I am thinking too, have been for years now. but at the same time babies are booming in the area (not russia, but east eu) so obviously a lot of people think differently.
You say booming ? But every woman needs to have 2.1.on average to have a stable population, so “booming” would be 4-8 at least, per woman. Is it that high ? Hungary ?
Australia’s first female member of it’s federal parliment had 13 kids for example, my mother was one of 8, I was one of three, my brother has 2, my sister and I none.
ok, not booming in that sense. but in comparison to what would I expect from the circumstances
I promise you, the last thing on the minds of Russian women in this moment is climate change
As a dude, I wouldn’t want to bring a kid into this shithole of a world either. Most of my generation doesn’t, and I can see why.
deleted by creator
I’m a snipped man… there were a lot of questions.
I don’t know who told you “no questions asked”, but that definitely doesn’t match my lived experience.
deleted by creator
So I refute one specific point of your argument. Another commenter even says they were outright denied. And your sane and rational response is “well that doesn’t matter” and you downvote me even though I was adding to the topic/discussion that you brought up?
Grow up dude.
Unfortunately for your case, you’re still wrong. But that won’t change your mind regardless and I’m not interested in talking to someone who acts the way you are.
I was refused (tried a few tines from 18-20) and had it done overseas im my late 20s. Thay was decades ago though so it might have changed.
Am Australian.
Australia.
It’s the false liability excuse. They think women will sue since it’s not as reversible. Really it’s management just justifying their jobs with bullshit policies.
Start locking up management who try to dictate patient care for practicing medicine without a license, see how fast most things level out.
That includes insurance groups, hospitals, and any other group who doesnt have an MD at the top level.
deleted by creator
Im 57, i tried to have a vasectomy at 18 and was refused here in Australia mutiple times over 2 years because “I would change mind” and I was told I would meet somone who would want to have kid with me and they’d be upset if i was unable to."
I flew to Thailand in my late 20s and had it done at the end of a holiday there in a hospital in Bangkok, no pun intended.
Even in 2016 when I had mine done it had to be done abroad even though I lived in a country where any consenting adult can ask to be sterilised without legally mandated delays or any nanny state bullshit. I was poor otherwise I could have sued half the urologists in the country because they gave wrong reasons for refusing like me not having children and me being young.
One also scammed me by sending me to a psychiatrist buddy of his who just went on to spend 30 minutes insulting my intelligence for wanting to not bring children into this world. I’m glad I learned the lesson at that age that just because people are doctors it doesn’t mean they’re not disrespectful and/or stupid.
deleted by creator
“vasectomy” - so he is a man. You’re not helping your cause by antagonizing half of the population (men).
I hate to shit on your general point, but they absolutely do ask in this case.
deleted by creator
I’m a woman, with two kids, they’re not my biological children. I never wanted to have kids but other people are having kids and I figure why not love the kids already here? There’s plenty of kids to go around there’s no need for me to personally make a kid. If the kids are already here we should do as much as we can to make their lives good but if they’re not already here it should stay that way.
100% agreed. If possible, get a rescue kid. (In general, without getting into the nitty gritty details about the adoption processes around the world.)
If they classify it, it means it’s a lot worse. Ukraine should send more steriliser over to russia.
Ukraine didn’t cause Russian men to lose their balls, they gave those up willingly.
Fewer Russians is excellent news, not every culture needs to stick around forever.
I wonder whether people would downvote this if it was Nazis in 1940s huh
Edit: I’ve jumped too far to reach to a conclusion here. Left for posterity.
So, what you’re saying is that everyone who was alive in Germany at the end of WWII should have been murdered?
Look at yourself.
should have been murdered?
where are you getting this? no one said anything of the sort. Saying that toxic cultural demise is a good thing is not equivellent to saying that people should be murdered.
Oof. I see where I’ve gone wrong. I’ve jumped to erasing people who already exist and not just those who might never exist. Those aren’t the same thing. (Not being sarcastic here, I’m acknowledging that fact.)
I understand your point but no one’s argueing that “russia should be literally deleted” - it’s impossible. Culture of 140M people will literally never go away in our lifetimes apart from armageddon. What people do argue here is that the current version of russian culture is beyond redemption, that russia needs a cultural revolution akin to complete abandonment of everything russia stands for today. Hope that clears this up.
We should be wary of making blanket statements like that. That way fascism lies. The only thing that’s horribly wrong with Russian “culture” at the moment is the desire to subjugate Ukraine, and by extension, any desire to do the same to other countries once that’s done.
Everyone in Russia who doesn’t share that particular world view is keeping their head down - or, as this article implies, refusing to breed with those of that world view. Or else, for reasons related to the fact that those of that world view exist.
Should they rise up and topple the oligarchy? Easier said than done. It takes courage the average person (Russian or otherwise) doesn’t have. And Putin is skilled at making people and their families suffer if they step out of line.
All the other problems Russia has exist at least in part in other countries not allied with them. Should those countries also pack up and die?
This isn’t Russia apology. I firmly believe they need to quit this needless war, bring their troops home and stay the heck out of Ukraine until trust can be regained. That might take centuries but the first step is an easy one.
No, ruzies are complicit and deserve no sympathy. The lack of any resistance or even acknowledgement is unseen in contemporary history.
Interesting. I never really considered how we could use birth rates to extrapolate how many people may have died in war.
Yep always silence the messenger, that’ll fix it! 👍
it’s working so far no? literally zero opposition for putin
There’s still a problem. You’re just not measuring it anymore.
So, no, it’s very much not fucking working.
No one wants their children to grow up in a corrupt Oligarchy.
Even russian women don’t like russians.
I think the implication is actually that there’s a marked dropoff of eligible young Russian men. To preserve a generation, Russia might soon need to use more North Koreans on the Ukrainian front, but that comes with its own problems and risks.
It’s weird that Putin’s avoiding peace negotiations, as he more than anyone needs to find a way to scale back the war effort before his hold on power begins to waver. I get that he needs to save face while doing so, but he’s not gonna get conditions more favorable than a Trump administration, so the clock is ticking.
i think kim stopped givign greedy putin more orcs. putin is running out of ethnic russians sooner or later.
Consider that he might not want it to end. If it ends, a wartime economy is no longer an excuse/distraction and he’d have to contend more with the disaster he’s created.
step 1: send your men to a pointless war
step 2: potential mothers realize their sons would only be meat in the meat grinder
step 3: nobody wants to have children anymore
step 4: be confused??step1.5; men fleeing to other countries to avoid war.
Don’t forget removing any relief for people having kids. And dissolve their quality of life. That always goes over so well in completely diminishing any chance of population growth. Just ask Kim jung un
But if your child dies in a pointless war we can offer you a satchel of potatoes. Is good, yes?
In at least one woman’s case, Putin offered her an actual meat grinder. No joke.
That’s not unique to Russia. Birth rates in developed nations have been plummeting across the board. The only reason the US was escaping it and hanging out around replacement was because of immigration, and, well, I don’t know if you’ve been keeping up with the news lately, but it seems like that’s going to change.
There’s lots of reasons driving demographic collapse, but I don’t think war is one of them. South Korea is usually heralded as the shining example of demographic collapse because their birth rate is the worst by far, and it generally seems to be the case that as economies becomes more “advanced”, women have less time and supports to focus on motherhood, and so just choose not to have kids. I put advanced in scare quotes because it seems to me that a truly advanced economy wouldn’t footgun itself with rapid demographic collapse. Not to say that the trend shouldn’t be towards a smaller population that will tax the Earth’s resources less, but the way to get there safely for civilization isn’t by falling off a cliff.
I have thought long and hard about having a kid. The only positives are some happy moments, my parents getting a grandbaby, and having someone to help make sure I don’t get taken advantage of when I’m old (I believe it is my financial responsibility to plan for myself but I know my brain may decline). Then I think of the negatives. The money, the loss of sleep, the loss of autonomy, the loss of time, it’s just all so so much. My life would get substantially worse.
Then I think about adopting someone older than a baby, and it’s an interesting idea, I don’t feel a need to spread my genes, but it’s the same thing. Then I think maybe adopt a teenager, it’s not as long of a commitment. But by this point it’s such a nasty equation of tradeoffs and I never want a child to be thought of that way. Plus, I really don’t think I have the heart or patience for adopting an older child.
So the only real thing I feel like I’m missing is having someone to make sure I’m not a victim of elder abuse. I’ll just try to keep getting you get friends and keep them close. I’m 33. My youngest close-ish friend is about 22. If I keep making young people my friends then hopefully if I’m in the nightmare scenario of mental decline and my spouse has passed that one of them can check up on me when we’re both old. That seems less shitty than adopting a child for that reason.
If you like working with kids, you could become a Big Brother or Big Sister too. They’ll remember you. ❤️
I’m a parent. I’m not going to try and sell you on having a kid; don’t do it unless you know you want to. What I’m about to say isn’t trying to sell you on parenthood or making apologetics, but just sharing my own personal experience having thought of almost all the same things you’ve thought and then crossed the bridge anyway. I figure that parenting really isn’t about what you get out of it, and you do get stuff out of it- the love, the experience, the ups and downs, someone to depend on and who depends on you. In a lot of ways it’s a microcosm of the human social experience in that you much more personally experience the things that make up existing with others in a society. You don’t necessarily need kids the same way you don’t necessarily need a significant other or a circle of friends, it’s just that humans are, by our nature, social creatures, and we’re almost always better off with richer social connections in our life than not. Yeah, you definitely do lose stuff; take autonomy, it’s kind of similar to how you lose a certain degree of autonomy when you get into a serious long term relationship, only you really shouldn’t break up with your kids if they piss you off. If that tradeoff isn’t for you, that’s cool!
Everybody’s different, but my kids have motivated me to get involved in politics (beyond just voting) at the local level and try to start planting trees whose shade I may never get to enjoy. It made me think hard about the kind of world that we’re leaving to them, and about what responsibility I have as a parent to do what I can to make that world a better place. I don’t expect anything from them; if they move away to live their life, that’s fine, I trust them to use their best judgment and live their life how they see fit, and just knowing that they’re depending on us to do everything we can for them has really motivated me to think differently about things in ways that I believe are generally positive. In case you’re curious about it, you could always try hosting an exchange student. It’s about the lowest commitment way to be a parent to someone, especially since they’re typically older teenagers. If you hate their guts, you can always ask the host organization that they be placed elsewhere. I’ve hosted I think eight exchange kids, and in hindsight, I don’t regret a single instance, even for the kids we didn’t get along with and had to place elsewhere.
Russia has a unique problem, and it is war. Just not the war in Ukraine by itself.
WWII was absolutely devastating to the Soviet Union’s population. Tons of “excess females”, which means there were so many men killed that women could not find a husband. The baby boom did not happen there; kinda the opposite. This affects both modern Russia and Ukraine.
Every 20 years or so, there is an “echo” of that loss in their population pyramid. It’s a drop in
birth ratesnew births from a relative lack of young adults starting families for part of the cycle. The echo reduces with each cycle, of course, but one of them is hitting right now. Putin is now amplifying that echo by having another war with such high losses.Edit: clarified some wording.
deleted by creator
it is somewhat in line what china is doing, making threats of invading taiwan, and the south sea, as a distraction to thier population decline. if they are tyring to boost births now in china, its already a bad sign.
Other countries also have the problems with the birth rates, but Putin is accelerating that. Murdering and crippling his young men in a senseless war. Keeping millions of men in the army away from home, far away from their girlfriends. Pushing people to leave the country, if they can. The problem might be there without Putin, but the war is making it so much worse
I blame Emmeline Pankhurst!
Well, not really.
“Allowing women to work” turned into “expecting women to work” and is now “two people’s wages are required to have a roof over your head”.
House price and rent caps would be marvellous, but no government is brave enough to shatter the teetering mess of economics that is built on it all. It should never have got to this point, and nobody wants to stop it getting worse. We need to bring the cost of housing down. Build more. Prevent prices rising. Hard caps on rent for basic properties. If not enough basic properties exist in an area, mandate they must be built instead of luxury expensive properties. Bring back council houses.
This might be a good time to pitch looking into joining or starting a local chapter of Strong Towns. They’re a local-first advocacy group rooted in the premise that our cities are broken because we’ve been building them badly for nearly 100 years now. Strong Towns aims to restore cities as places that are built first and foremost for people to live in. As I’ve gotten deeper into this, it’s really shocked me how much of the blame lies nearly exclusively with municipal policy and political inertia (politicians sticking with doing things the established bad way because that’s the established way and they’d rather have a bankrupt, unlivable city than risk changing what they know). The good news is that municipal policy is probably the easiest, most accessible level of policy to effect, and it has the most direct and immediate impact on your life and the lives of people around you. Affecting good urban policy to make our cities livable is what Strong Towns is all about.
You might also look at the Leadership Council for Justice and Accountability. They’re another local-first group that focuses on all forms of justice for lower-income communities.
My vaginas baking equipment would shrivel up too if Putin was my leader. Much like it’s reaction to Americans leadership.
My dick would also go quite limp since even having sex feels off with such bullshit on top.
That’s not a good look…
