MOSCOW (AP) - The Russian Cabinet on Thursday rallied behind a program
aimed at countering the country's sharp population decline by working to
improve health, encourage women to bear more children and foster immigration.
Yet some demographers were skeptical that a government program could
solve the population problem, blamed largely on the social and economic
disorder following the collapse of the Soviet Union.
Heavy drinking, poor nutrition and medical care, and environmental pollution
plague Russia. Low birth rates have combined with a short average life
span to accelerate the problem. In a major speech last year, President
Vladimir Putin warned that the nation's very survival was in jeopardy.
Prime Minister Mikhail Kasyanov told the Cabinet on Thursday that 1999
was the worst year, with a population drop of 768,000 or 0.5 percent.
A government study prepared for the Cabinet meeting said the population,
which was 145.6 million in 2000, could fall by 2.8 million by 2005, the
ITAR-Tass and Interfax news agencies reported.
``The decrease of the able-bodied population of the Russian Federation
is not just a social problem, it is a problem of whether our state will
develop successfully of unfavorably,'' Kasyanov said.
``If this is not resolved, the economy will soon begin experiencing
a labor shortage,'' Interfax quoted Kasyanov as saying.
The Cabinet tentatively approved a program aimed at stemming the decline,
which was drawn up by the Ministry of Labor and Social Development. The
ministry was given until June 1 to elaborate a more detailed program on
improving the nation's health, increasing the birth rate and boosting immigration.
Average life expectancy for Russian men was 59.8 years in 1999, the
last year for which figures are available, said Maria Shabalina, a spokeswoman
for the State Statistics Committee. Life expectancy for women was 72.2
years.
Vladimir Sorokin, head of the State Statistics Committee, said population
decline for the next 20 to 30 years is inevitable.
Russia today is missing ``the unborn people of those millions of our
fellow citizens who died as a result of World War I, the civil war, all
the revolutionary events, the famine of the 1930s and so on,'' he said
on Ekho Moskvy radio.
Murray Feshbach, an expert on Russian demography at the Woodrow Wilson
International Center for Scholars in Washington, forecast the population
will keep dropping, partly because of an ``incredible increase'' in deaths
from AIDS and tuberculosis he said was expected.
Feshbach said it would be difficult for Russia to double its birth rate,
which is what demographers estimated would be necessary to maintain the
current population.
Some people have suggested increasing government aid to families with
children, but Feshbach and Sorokin said that was unlikely to stimulate
enough births.
``What they have to do is change attitudes and expectations and health
services and conditions,'' Feshbach said.
Nor would immigration provide an easy solution, said Anatoly Vishnevsky,
director of the Center for Demography and Human Ecology.
``I don't think the country is ready for that, either economically or
even psychologically,'' Vishnevsky told ORT television.
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