Russia’s payments to young mothers fuel birth rate row
Critics say the schemes risk encouraging teenage pregnancies as part of attempts to slow falling population numbers.
By Yaroslava Kiryukhina.
New schemes granting payments to pregnant students, including schoolgirls, have sparked controversy in Russia.
Critics say they risk encouraging teenage pregnancy and are aimed at boosting the country’s plummeting birth rate.
Since January, according to a count by BBC Russian, 27 regions have rolled out programmes under which pregnant full-time students in higher education can claim a one-off payment. In most of the regions, women aged under 25 are eligible, and the payment is 100,000 roubles ($1220).
An order from the Ministry of Labour in February includes provision of payments to pregnant students as part of “regional programmes to increase birth rates”.
'Tragedy not heroism'
Most controversially, three regions, Oryol, Bryansk, and Kemerovo, have extended their schemes to pregnant girls in schools, which means it applies to teenagers aged 18 or younger. No lower age limit has been given. The age of sexual consent in Russia is 16.
Ksenia Goryacheva, a member of the Russian Duma, or parliament, which is loyal to President Vladimir Putin's government, has been critical of such policies.
"When a child gives birth to a child it's not heroism, it's a tragedy," she said. "Let's not use children's naivety as a way to correct demographic statistics."
Well-known Duma advocate for family rights Nina Ostanina said that such payments could be taken as "propaganda for early births", which she said was contrary to "traditional values". She stressed that the government was not trying to encourage women under 18 to give birth.
Oryol governor Andrey Klychkov said the move should be considered a “measure of support” for people “facing difficult life situations, approved at the federal level and not a dubious news item for dramatic headlines”.
'Catastrophic for the nation'
Last year saw the fewest children born in Russia in any of the last 25 years – just 1.2 million.
In July, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov described the birth rate as "awfully low" and "catastrophic for the nation's future".
By 2046, the country's population may fall to 139 million - from 146 million at the start of 2023 - Russian statistics agency Rosstat predicts.
Demography has been a theme in Russian President Vladimir Putin's speeches for many years.
In a speech in December, he said "improving the demographic situation, supporting the birth rate and large families" was "our priority national goal".
Calls for women to start families earlier have also increased in recent months.
Speaking at a national conference in February, Russian Academy of Sciences professor Igor Kogan stated that a Russian girl's first sexual experience - which he said typically happened at 16 years old - should "end in pregnancy and successful childbirth".
He later clarified that he meant the "normal" age for this would be between 19 and 22.
Maternity capital
So far only a small number of women have received the new payments.
The BBC has gathered records of 66 pregnant students since January who have received payments of between 20,000 and 150,000 roubles ($242 and $1,815) in different regions of Russia.
Labour Minister Anton Kotyakov said in April the payments were not meant to encourage early childbirth, but to support young mothers in difficult situations.
"State support should be aimed at all mothers who need it. At any age, we should not leave a person alone with the life situation they are facing."
The new payments add to existing programmes, including "maternity capital" - a payment introduced in 2007 which was initially given for a second child, but later extended to include firstborns.
Families now receive 690,000 roubles ($8,349) for their first baby and another 222,000 roubles ($2,686) for their second. The new payments to students and schoolgirls are in addition to these.
Wider trend
Declining birth rates, and women starting families later in life, are wider trends, especially in wealthier countries.
However, the number of births in Russia fell dramatically during the post-Soviet economic and political turmoil of the 1990s, from two million in 1990 to 1.2 million in 1999.
The numbers rose again after 2000, but have declined since 2016 - partly because the generation born in the 1990s is smaller, and also because the number of children born per woman has fallen.
Russia's fertility rate stands at around 1.4 children per women – above Italy at 1.2, but below France at 1.8, according to OECD 2022 figures. For countries to maintain their populations – not taking immigration into account - the rate needs to be around 2.1.
More recently in Russia, however, some observers point to the Ukraine war, noting economic uncertainty, as well as the numbers of Russian men deployed to fight or who have left the country to avoid conscription.
'Spike then decline'
Experts say efforts by governments to alter demographic trends are rarely successful in the long term.
"Attempts to stimulate the birth rate of firstborns have never worked anywhere, neither in Russia nor abroad in recent decades," says independent Russian demographer Alexey Raksha.
However, he says the introduction of maternity capital for second children did boost the fertility rate in Russia initially.
John Ermisch, an Oxford University emeritus professor of family demography, says the impact of financial incentives is usually temporary: "You get a short spike, then a decline."
He is even more sceptical about the idea of trying to raise birth rates among women under 20.
"In the UK and US, the goal is to reduce teenage pregnancy, because it often leads to social problems and harms the mother's health - not to larger families, as some governments might hope," he said.
Both experts say wider financial security plays an important role.
"Without a sense of stability," says Prof Ermisch, women "will not give birth for any amount of money".
Read the full story in Russian here.
There will likely be many orphans created by these schemes. Sad.