Russian demographics update

I had written the below post on Sunday evening with the intention of publishing it on Tuesday. I’m sure everyone  is expecting me to jump into the fray with a suitably outraged post about the horrific Metro bombings in Moscow but, at this point in time, I really don’t have anything to add beyond the utterly banal observation that killing unarmed civilians is an awfully evil and contemptible thing to do. Glenn Greenwald has, in my mind, convincingly argued that live-blogging major news stories as they happen, or in their immediate aftermath, is frequently detrimental to understanding the truth: in the heat of the moment, especially when terrorist attacks are concerned, so many rumors, half-truth, and outright falsehoods enter the conversation that it’s virtually impossible to keep everything straight. I will try and have something to say about Russia and terrorism in the near future, but I’d like to let the dust settle, and everyone’s emotions cool, before writing on the topic.

I hadn’t surfed through the GKS website in awhile, so thought I’d drop by and see if they had any juicy new demographic data. I was probably one of about 10 people in the United States who would be excited by this, but they did! The new data covers, among other things, the natural movement of the population, the infant mortality rate, the murder and accident rates, the number of divorces and marriages, and all sorts of other fun stuff. Saying that I am not a statistical wizard is like saying the 2010 New Jersey Nets are not a good basketball team, so if you were expecting some fancy regressions, t-squared tests, and all that sort of quantitative stuff…well, you’re at the wrong blog.

Before proceeding further, I vaguely recall reading somewhere that the length of the New Year holiday was slightly different in 2010 than in 2009 so some of the numbers (particularly the data on alcohol poisonings, murders, and accidental deaths, which are almost too good to be believed) should perhaps be taken with a bit of salt.

Let’s start with the bad news. The number of births in January 2010 fell by 3.7% from the January 2009 level, going from 137,503 to 132,371.We’ll obviously have to wait for the February and March data to see if this is either a temporary blip in Russia’s generally positive trends of the past five years, or an indication that the “year of crisis” had more serious effects on fertility than was first thought.

However, while the downturn in births is surely not a positive sign, there was some very positive movement in virtually every other indicator.  The natural decrease in population continued its sharp decline, it was 8.4%  lower in January 2010 than it was in January 2009 (43,945 in January 2010 vs. 47,967 in January 2009), as the number of deaths decreased by 4.9% from 185,479 to 176,316. Even more dramatically, and as evidence that Russia’s medical system is continuing to improve, the infant mortality rate (literally “the number of children who died before they turned 1, per 1,000 births”) went from 8.5 in January 2009 to 7.6 in January 2010. Russia is not quite at developed world levels of infant mortality (and I believe Russia uses a slightly different standard of live birth than the US and other Western countries), but it is getting rather close. This is particularly impressive considering not only the awful Soviet medical inheritance, but also the continued  prevalence of deep poverty and the generally lower standard of living in Russia as compared to the West.

Perhaps most impressive of all, there was a 9.3%  decline in the total number of deaths from external causes, and declines of 12.9%, 19.2%, 16.4 in accidental alcohol poisonings, suicides, and murders respectively. It is true that Russia’s rates of these “external causes” were very high to begin with, and much higher than in developed Western countries, but it is very encouraging news indeed that Russians are drinking themselves to death, killing themselves, and killing each other at much lower levels than they used to (for example the murder rate through the first 9 months of 2009 was itself 10% lower than in the first 9 months of 2008, while the number of alcohol poisonings was 16% lower, see here).

That all of the above was accomplished in the  midst of a very sharp economic downturn and a rapid rise in unemployment is nothing short of a miracle. Indeed the data are so generally positive that, I will admit, I do have a few nagging doubts over possible manipulation. However in the absence of  any allegations of this, much less actual evidence, I’ve decided to basically trust the GKS numbers until someone gives me a a very compelling reason not to (Note: “Vladimir Putin is a bad bad man!” is not a convincing reason to suspect GKS of massive fraud).

Why are these data important? Why did I just compose what may well be the drollest blog post ever written? Because I think the actual numbers I’ve listed give lie to the the notion, popular in large sections of the Western press, that “everything in Russia is not only bad, it is getting worse quickly!” much less the even nuttier idea that 2010 Russia is, like the 1985 Soviet Union, standing on a precipice of collapse and dissolution. The 1970’s and the first half of the 1980’s didn’t just witness a slower pace of progress in matters of Soviet health and demographics, they witnessed a rapid deterioration. The infant mortality rate wasn’t just going down more slowly than it used to, it was actually increasing. Alcoholism wasn’t simply prevalent, it was rapidly spreading to every area of society (including high priority sectors like the military). The crime rate wasn’t just high, it was visibly getting worse. Some perspicacious Western researchers correctly saw in the broad deterioration of Soviet public health the precursor of a wide ranging systemic breakdown. Indeed, perhaps the best evidence of Stephen Kotkin’s “collapse” thesis is the historically unprecedented decline in health and welfare that took place before the Soviet Union actually broke apart politically. Confident, healthy, and stable societies are not characterized by negative progress: Soviet society was sick, and the data proved as much.

As you can clearly see from the data, in today’s Russia the trends are virtually all pointed in the right direction. Does this mean everything is perfect? No. The levels of many things, alcoholism, poverty, murder, suicide, and mortality, remain high, but if the rates of progress of the past 5 years are maintained for another 5 (which is not at all unreasonable), Russia will look even more like a “normal country” than it used to. This is extremely good news as, regardless of your opinion of Putin, we all surely agree that a Russia whose citizens live longer, happier, healthier, more productive, and less drink-sodden lives is a better one. Looking at the data, you might even see why most Russians don’t think Putin is Beelzebub.