Someone, hit the panic button! Russian population shrunk by nearly 700,000 people in 2005, according to official Russian government statistics, and the life expectancy of a Russian male is now a meager 58 years. In all, since the early 1990s, the Russian population has been declining at a rate of over 600,000 people per year on average, and there are no signs of slowing down. A recent World Bank report estimates a further decline of 18 million by 2025 (900,000 per year on average). Some suggest the population will drop to 80 million people by 2050 if the current trends continue (that’s losing over 1.3 million people per year on average). 1.3 million people per year on average?! 1.3 million!!! And that’s taking into the account the inflow of migrants from Central Asia and elsewhere.
Who is to blame?
“Alcohol is the major killer,” said Marquez in an interview. According to new research, published this month in The Lancet medical journal, the toll of excessive alcohol consumption could be much higher than official statistics allow. A control-study in the Urals found that more than 30 percent of young men who died of non-communicable diseases and injuries, died of causes related to alcohol consumption, be it alcohol poisoning, alcohol-induced violence or drunken driving.
Alcohol is destroying rural Russia, and officials are suggesting that the problem of counterfeit alcohol production should be addressed:
Health experts say government efforts should target the counterfeit alcohol market, which is wreaking havoc on Russia’s working class. Occasional stings aimed at uncovering illegal alcohol production aren’t enough, the experts say — authorities need to clamp down on corrupt officials who look the other way for a price.
“The main problem is the availability of cheap counterfeit alcohol, and the corruption associated with it,” Nemtsov said. “That’s the root of the evil, and so far, authorities haven’t done anything about it.”
But that’s only part of the solution. Attacking counterfeit goods market can certainly prevent some deaths (40,000 die from alcohol poisoning in Russia vs. 400 in the U.S. according to the same story), but it does not address the underlying problem – why do people drink so much? Is it, perhaps, a sense of hopelessness?
Fifteen years of post-Soviet capitalism has left rural Russia straggling far behind. Russians in collective farms across the country’s 11 time zones could count on a safety net of free housing and health care — and on regular paychecks — during the Soviet era. In today’s Russia, those same villagers live day-to-day, shivering through stretches of winter without heat, cringing at the sight of their children in tattered school clothes.
“Those who don’t have cattle or a job, they drink,” says Artem Norbekov, 29, unemployed and wobbly from an afternoon of drinking diluted solvent. “We’re not to blame for drinking — those who are in charge of our jobs are to blame.”
The key statistic in all of this, however, is not the amount of deaths the can be attributed to alcohol, however astonishing that number is. The key statistic is that
In January-November 2005, there were 1,341,400 births in Russia (compared with 1,379,700 the year before), and 2,112,200 million deaths (2,095,800). The birth rate declined in 79 Russian regions and the death rate increased in 60 regions in the period.
Birth rates are declining and mortality rates are rising. Alcohol would explain the fact that mortality rates are on the rise, but it is also partly a contributor to the declining birth rates. Birth rates per 1,000 people are actually on the rise in Russia, but so are the mortality rates per 1,000 people. Overall, according to the Economic Intelligence country statistics, the gap between birth rates per 1,000 people and mortality rates per 1,000 people are increasing.
Published Date: February 03, 2006