Ukraine and Russia: a battle for demographic supremacy between freedom and autocracy
One of the criticisms you’ll often hear about Vladimir Putin is that he and the regime he represents are “indifferent” to the pressing demographic problems facing the country, or that whatever efforts he and his lackeys might have made to safeguard Russia’s future have “totally failed.” People making this criticism also usually go on to claim that a more “democratic” (i.e. responsive) regime in Russia would address issues of health and demographics far more energetically and far more effectively than Putin’s rank authoritarianism has managed to.
Well, luckily for comparative social scientists, Russia has a neighbor that is substantially more democratic, liberal, and open, with which it shares many hundreds of years of common history, and which had a very similar demographic profile at the start of economic and political transition. The Ukraine! Actually, to be precise, during the 1960’s, 70’s, and 80’s the Ukraine had mortality and morbidity figures that were marginally better than Russia’s: a slightly lower prevalence of hardcore binge drinking, a slightly higher birth rate, a slightly lower mortality rate, and a slightly better functioning healthcare system. So if the Ukraine had simply succeeded at matching Russia’s performance since the collapse of the Soviet Union (not a very high threshold to clear!) it’s population would be slightly healthier and more fecund.
Well, what’s happened since the Orange Revolution and the onset of “high-Putinism” in 2004? Has the Ukrainian government been able to address its own increasingly pressing demographic problems? How have the the Russians done? And how have these two countries performed in comparison to one another? Better? Worse? About the same?
Let’s find out!
According to data taken from the State Committee of Statistics for Ukraine and the Russian Federal Service of State Statistics here are the coefficients (rates per 1,000 inhabitants) of fertility, mortality, and natural increase/decrease, for Ukraine and the Russian Federation.
First, fertility:
Ukraine Russia
2004 9.0 10.4
2005 9.0 10.2
2006 9.8 10.4
2007 10.2 11.3
2008 11.0 12.1
2009 11.1 12.5
2010* 10.6 12.4
Next, mortality:
Ukraine Russia
2004 16.0 16.0
2005 16.6 16.1
2006 16.2 15.2
2007 16.4 14.6
2008 16.3 14.6
2009 15.3 14.2
2010* 14.6 13.9
And lastly, the rate of natural increase/decrease:
Ukraine Russia
2004 -7.0 -5.6
2005 -7.6 -5.9
2006 -6.4 -4.8
2007 -6.2 -3.3
2008 -5.3 -2.5
2009 -4.2 -1.7
2010* -4.0 -1.5
You are more than welcome to draw your own conclusions from these numbers, but I’ll toss out a few of my own.
1) Ukraine is facing a much more serious demographic crisis than Russia: it’s rate of natural decrease is substantially larger, and has been for a long time, and, as a reponse to the horrific economic downturn of 2008-09, the number of births has fallen sharply over the past year. If you hear a neocon rambling on about how “Russia is doomed” because of its bad demographics simply asked them “if Russia is doomed, what does that make Ukraine?” You’ll probably get some very interesting responses since most neocons hate Russia and love Ukraine.
2) Both the Russian and Ukrainian states seem to have learned some lessons from the 1998-99 economic crisis. Whereas that downturn witnessed skyrocketing mortality rates, and truly disastrous declines in public health, during the current crisis there have been continued health improvements and significant reductions in mortality. While it has gotten scant attention in the Western press, the fact that the “year of crisis” wasn’t, like previous crises, an unmitigated human disaster is a very good thing indeed
3) Both Russia and the Ukraine have a very long way to go if they are to “solve” their demographic problems, but Russia seems to have made more progress. Have Russia’s successes been modest? Sure. But the Ukraine’s have been even more so
4) The idea that life has only gotten worse for the average Russian seems hard to square with the data. Russians feel more comfortable having children than they used to, and are living a bit longer. Additionally, however bad life is for the average Russian (and compared to life in developed Western countries it is pretty bad) life seems to be rather worse for the average Ukrainian.
5) The idea that the Russians should rush to embrace the Ukrainian model is a pretty silly one. Ukraine’s more liberalized and democratic political system is in many ways admirable, but it appears to be significantly less competant than even Putin’s system in addressing issues of life and death.
6) The “Orange Revolution” wasn’t a “revolution” in any real sense of the word. There probably aren’t many people who would contest this anymore, but if you go back to 2005 and look at some of the insane rhetoric which greeted the protests in Kiev you will surely retch (at least if you have any honesty, or any shame). Were the “revolution’s” goals of democracy, accountability, liberty, and freedom good ones? Sure. But it hasn’t delivered on any of its absurdely aggressive and optimistic promises.
and lastly
7) Structural factors (and not the personal morality of today’s politicians, be they democratic or authoritarian, or the precise constitution of a regime) are by far the most important influences on the demographic situation in the post-Soviet space. Like everything else, the healthcare systems and population trends inhereted from the Soviet Union by Ukraine and Russia had been built up over a very large period of time and were awful verging on disastrous. It would take any government, much less the corrupt and inefficient ones in Moscow in Kiev, a very long time to adequately address these structural deformities.
In conclusion, the data shows that Russia is at least a few years ahead of Ukraine in achieving demographic stabilization. On the one hand this isn’t exactly shocking considering the much larger funds at the Kremlin’s disposal and the evident priority it has placed on formulating a demographic policy. On the other hand, the American media has engaged in such a profound propaganda effort about the efficacy of “democracy” in solving any and all problems thrust in front ot it that it is nonetheless a bit surprising to see a straight comparison in which a democracy is outpreformed by an evil autocracy in a sphere as vital as healthcare. It will no doubt will very interesting to watch the comparative performance of the two countries as they recover from the sharp downturn they experienced in 2008-09. My prediction? Russia’s performance won’t blow anyone away, but it will continue to make halting progress towards achieving natural population stabilization and will continue to preform modestly better than its neighbor to the West.
*projections for 2010 are based on January-February data. In the interests of clarity I decided to do projections based on the percentage change from the analagous period in 2009 because posting the actual coefficients would give a very confusing picture. In winter, the death rate is noticeably higher and the birth rate noticeably lower than the full year’s average . Yes, I know it’s a bit crude to extrapolate linerally from a relatively small sample size…but I’m doing it for less than 12 months, many “Russia experts” extrapolate linear demographic projections decades into the future. If the Ukrainians hadn’t been late in releasing their March 2010 figures I would’ve have a more rubust sample to draw from. If anyone can dig up that Ukrainian data I’ll gladly update the post to include it.
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So many words, so much time needed, so assiduous text-builder… It must be a really job, and a good one! Mark, you resemble so much one of Putin’s yes-men called Markov, both outwardly (though yes, you are much younger) and verbally (though no, you aren’t so fawningly obsequious, are you?)
I called the Russian government “corrupt and inefficient” and “authoritarian,” and labeled its achievements in the health sphere “modest.” Those are really the terms used by Kremlin yes-men? Boy, I guess the Kremlin should find some better hacks.
The reason I’m not “fawningly obsequious” is exceedingly simple: because I’m not beholden to anyone (much less Vladimir Putin). If the Ukrainian health data had been better than the Russian health data my analysis would be different.
If there is some factual error I’ve made, then please do tell me. My stated desire to be accurate isn’t just a pretense, and if you can provide evidence (real, verifiable evidence, not vacuous moral outrage or statements to the effect of “Vladimir Putin sucks, bad!”) that my analysis is wrong I will update the post to include it.
In response to another comment. See in context »You may laugh at, Mark, but the Russian government labels itself “corrupt and inefficient”. And what? It’s just a kind of their cunning PR, nothing else. “We are not so good as we want to be, though we’re trying so much, just wait wait wait…”
In response to another comment. See in context »And about the “demographic battle”: there are missed details about. Depopulation in the (Russian) East of Ukraine goes obviously faster than in the (Not-Russian) West. Therefore, you’re mostly talking about what used to be Novorossiysky kray (the New-Russia region or province), a former part of Russia itself (Velikorossiya) having been made Ukrainian only by the Soviet government. So, this depopulation may turn Ukraine even more Ukrainian than it has been.
A few thoughts on the go.
1) Ukraine has a marginally older median age than Russia, so using birth rates / death rates isn’t a good idea. We need measures that cancel out the effects of specific population age structure. Ukraine’s life expectancy (68.3) was marginally better than Russia’s (67.8) in 2008 (World Bank), and its big mortality reduction in 2008-09 indicates it kept the lead. Similarly, Russia’s fertility rate (1.49) is not awesomely bigger than Ukraine’s (1.39) in 2008, and may be partly or wholly explained by the fact that Russia’s demographic collapse in the 1990’s was quicker and sharper than Ukraine’s.
2) Much as I love to hate the Orangists, it’s not really true that they haven’t done much about depopulation. For instance, they also introduced pretty generous maternal benefits at around the same time as Russia, IIRC.
3) I’ve thought of doing a comparative assessment of Ukraine’s and Russia’s demographic performance in a post, but I realized that the real differences don’t (at least yet) warrant making too much of it.
4) If I had to make an estimate, I’d say Russia and Ukraine will follow essentially the same pattern in the years ahead – a recovery of fertility rates to 1.7-1.8 within a few years, a rise in life expectancy to 75 years within a decade, substantial immigration to Russia and zero net migration in Ukraine; Russia’s population will stagnate or rise slowly, Ukraine’s will fall slowly or stagnate.
Anatoly,
As I think you can tell from my highly sarcastic title, I don’t intend this to be the last word on the subject but merely a starting point for discussion.
I would agree that the differences between Ukraine and Russia are not that extreme, but I think plenty of people (Eberstadt, Feshbach, Steyn etc. etc.) would literally erupt into flames if they tried to comprehend that Russian demographics are actually marginally better than, or at the absolute worst directly comparable to, their beloved “New Europe.”
This post was intended to serve as a wake up call to those people, largely on the neocon right, who insist on blaming Russia’s demographic problems solely on the personal malevolence of Vladimir Putin. As I think you can see with a comparison to the far more democratic and open Ukraine, the demographic issue is FAR more complicated and intractable than that.
In response to another comment. See in context »Steyn doesn’t belong to your list; he is well aware that Russia’s demographics is comparable to other post-Communist countries. And he certainly doesn’t blame Putin.
In response to another comment. See in context »I’ve written about Steyn’s views on demographics before. While I suppose it’s possible that on some intellectual level Steyn comprehends that Russia’s demographics are very much comparable to those of other post-Communist countries, in practice he consistently singles out Russia as being especially doomed. As best I could tell by scouring the internet, Steyn has said nary a word about Poland (whose long-term demograhpics are every bit as dire as Russia’s) nor about the dire demographics of the other pro-American countries of “new Europe.”
Like most neocons, Steyn largely limits his criticism of Europe to those “decadent” countries like Germany and France which are not on board with every American military scheme. It’s certainly his right to write whatever he pleases, but he is not in the least bit consistent.
In response to another comment. See in context »Great minds think alike! I’ve been making points similar to your #5 for a while, and have been met by silence, denial, etc…
http://www.acus.org/new_atlanticist/ukraine-delicate-balancing-act
http://washingtonrealist.blogspot.com/2009/09/two-timetables.html
The Powers That Be in the Anglosphere are deeply invested in in the “Russia is too sick to matter” meme, though it is true that it is better for Russia that they continue to believe that rather than their alternative “Russia is an immediate, dire menace to all the values we hold dear, and we must have a massive military buildup t oppose this menace!”
Somebody recently put it very nicely either on this blog or another one. Cannot recall the exact phrase but something like “for always, the west either thinks russia’s too sick to matter or too strong and needs to contained.”
It’s true. Russia has never been part of “the club.” And, whenever it counted, the West has been on the wrong with its analysis, for example Hitler thought Russia would “collapse like a house of cards.
In response to another comment. See in context »If by “liberal” you mean a political system where the president publicly calls his prime minister a whore; the prime minister calls the president a thief and a traitor; and the members of the parliament are throwing eggs at each other, then yes, Ukraine’s political system is as liberal as they get. It is also useless, as most Ukrainians will tell you.
I am not sure what the word “competant” means. It must be a combination of competitive and competent. Alas, under its former president Ukraine was neither. Russia made significant progress, while Ukrainian had the pleasure of watching their elected officials on TV punching each other in the face.
If you are doing a statistical analysis of population growth, why not do it properly? Plot the data and do a regression analysis. The data sample is very small, but what the hell. You may notice that the rate of Russia’s demographic recovery is substantially higher than that of Ukraine.
If your numbers are correct, Russia’s population growth figures may be in the plus about six years ahead of Ukraine.
Igor,
I don’t think the Ukrainian political system is perfect, and have never claimed that it is. The whole point of the post was that Russia’s system has arguably performed better in a very crucial area, and if you read some of my other posts you’ll see that I am hardly in the business of writing apologetics for Yushenko!
But despite the Ukraine’s corruption and paralysis, it is more liberal and open than Russia, the recent presidential election was truly competitive which can’t be said about the election of Medvedev, and I don’t think that’s up for debate regardless of who calls whom a “whore.”
As for statistics, I’ve never tried to hide the fact that I’m not in the running for a Field’s medal: if you’re looking for fancy regressions you’re at the wrong blog. I just try to find data that Americans will likely never have seen (I think comparative demographic data of Ukraine and Russia definitely falls into this category) and provide some explanation and analysis of it.
I agree that Russia seems to be a few years ahead of Ukraine, but I’m not quite as optimistic as you are that it’s population figures will turn positive (starting in about 2015 or so the number of women of childbearing age is going to shrink, it will be a very heavy lift just to keep things static)
In response to another comment. See in context »Ukraine ain’t any more democratic than Russia, it’s just split down the middle. This has some positive results, like competitive national election or a livelier parlament, but the overall effect is decidedly not healthy. The division could prove to be so deep and irreconcilable that the Ukrainian state may eventually cease to exist.
In response to another comment. See in context »Although the data sample is small, if Russia maintains its current population growth trend, it should be in the plus in the first quarter of 2011. That’s only a year from now and both linear and log curves are virtually on top of each other for the next ten years with a high correlation coefficient.
What happens in 2015 with the number of women of childbearing age will obviously change things. But the data suggests that at least for a couple of years before that Russia may see positive population growth.
With Ukraine it is a different story. If the current trend continues unchanged, Ukraine may be in the plus some time in 2017. But this is just too far into the future to make any serious predictions. It is quite likely that Ukraine will run into more economic troubles before that time and population growth trend will slow down.
My point is, even though just by looking at the numbers in your table it may appear that Russia is just marginally ahead of Ukraine, the lead is actually substantial.
The apparent liberalism of Ukraine’s political system is due to the nation’s lack of tradition of statehood. It is not really liberalism but chaos growing from inexperience. Political views of Russians and Ukrainians are not that different. Even in terms of culture, despite years of forced ukrainization by the two previous administrations, majority of residents of Ukraine’s capital still speak Russian.
The only major difference is that one country has centuries of self-governance experience and the other – centuries of habit of looking toward its neighbors for guidance. In a nutshell, many Ukrainians simply don’t take their government seriously. And, apparently, the government does not take itself seriously either.
I know I’m not a quantitative expert, but I’m not sure what sort of regressions you’re running: what is being correlated to produce a high coefficient? What relationship between which variables are you examining? The relationship between the birth rate and what? I think I’ve states pretty openly that Russia’s performance is marginally better than Ukraine’s, but if you’re looking for a song and dance routine about how everything in Russia is looking up you’re not going to get it from me.
As for Ukraine’s liberalism being simply the product of “inexperience” there is surely some truth to that argument, but only some. After the “velvet divorce” with the Czech Republic, Slovakia, which also had little to no history as an independent state, moved, as least temporarily, in a sharply authoritarian direction. It hardly seems that there is some ironclad law of politics which stipulates that new states must arrive at some form of shaky liberalism by default, and the Ukraine COULD be much more authoritarian than it is.
In response to another comment. See in context »Nothing fancy: just linear regression for the rate of natural increase/decrease data you posted. Plot the data points as function of time, fit a line and calculate the slope. You will see what I mean.
Inexperience with self-governance can only result in two possible initial outcomes: political chaos (Ukraine) or reliance on strongman leadership (can’t really call Meciar an autocrat). Slovakia fell within the structure of the EU within a decade and things stabilized. Ukraine is still in limbo.
In response to another comment. See in context »Don’t really those people who post off/topic comments, but whatever…
This editorial from Georgia’s The Messenger is a good laugh
Did somebody give them guarantees that Russia would not interfere? Some suggest that Georgia might have had guarantees of Western assistance but this is unlikely to be true. Perhaps the whole affair was a mousetrap sprung by the Russians, who promised not to interfere and naturally did not keep their promise, as many people think.
http://messenger.com.ge/issues/2097_may_3_2010/2097_edit.html
So Georgia’s excuse now is that they got busted in a sting operation lol lol lol
[...] Adomanis writes about politics and demography in Russia and [...]
[...] Adomanis writes about politics and demography in Russia and [...]
Mark and Igor,
I don’t think that Russia’s population will be on the plus side any soon. The best that Russia can achieve is a stable population which is either zero population growth or mildly negative growth. Russia’s demographic profile, in my opinion, is heading in that direction. All depends on improving the Russian economy , a pronatalist policy and further healthcare reform – all these addressed and continue to be addressed by Putin-Medvedev. Cautious optimism would be my take on Russian demographics. Political stability is crucial – hence how one can hate Putin for being ‘authoritarian’, at least he brought some stability political-wise.
As for Ukraine,I suspect that they will long for political stability and there will be no ‘colour revolutions’ for many years to come. Russian influence will be stronger there as the USA is pre-occupied with more serious domestic and Iraq/Afghan problems while the EU is in such a mess with the Greek economic ‘bailout’ on the horizon and the economic flu probably hitting Portugal , Spain and Italy soon. Ukraine, I think, is ‘naturally’ part of the Russian sphere (due to historical reasons)rather than the EU-USA alliance and the ‘Orange Revolution’ may be just an interregnum during a period of Russian political weakness. Demographic-wise, I believe Ukraine will fare poorly unless it achieves political stability and improve its economy. Political stability will be achieved if the EU and Russia stop their geopolitical games in carving that country as part of their respective ‘regions’. Those geopolitical games won’t end though Russia now has the ‘upper hand’.
Igor, the regression analysis you mentioned is too simplistic to make a reasonable prediction of plausible population growth trends. I don’t know the theories but I vaguely remember that a complex, probabilistic analysis using TFR trends , mortality trends etc. may hazard a guess but even these methods have fallen short to predict with any accuracy. The maths just cannot catch up with surprises in socio-economic events that may alter TFR and morality trends drastically.
>>The maths just cannot catch up with surprises in socio-economic events that may alter TFR and morality trends drastically.<<
Yikes! I meant mortality! Sorry for the slip-up.