Difference between revisions of "Essay: Why I am a narcissist and not bullish on Russia's future"
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'''8.''' Russia's persecution of Russian Protestants (See: [[Essay: Why Russia's religious persecution of Russian Protestants is not good for Russia|Why Russia's religious persecution of Russian Protestants is not good for Russia]]). | '''8.''' Russia's persecution of Russian Protestants (See: [[Essay: Why Russia's religious persecution of Russian Protestants is not good for Russia|Why Russia's religious persecution of Russian Protestants is not good for Russia]]). | ||
| − | '''9.''' According to [[United States Department of State|US Department of State]] in 2017,<ref>{{Cite web|url=https://www.state.gov/documents/organization/281196.pdf|title=RUSSIA 2017 INTERNATIONAL RELIGIOUS FREEDOM REPORT|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20180531085333/https://www.state.gov/documents/organization/281196.pdf|archive-date=31 May 2018}}</ref> | + | '''9.''' According to [[United States Department of State|US Department of State]] in 2017,<ref>{{Cite web|url=https://www.state.gov/documents/organization/281196.pdf|title=RUSSIA 2017 INTERNATIONAL RELIGIOUS FREEDOM REPORT|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20180531085333/https://www.state.gov/documents/organization/281196.pdf|archive-date=31 May 2018}}</ref> Muslims in Russia numbered 14 million or roughly 10% of the total population. |
=== Demographic projections of Russia's future population === | === Demographic projections of Russia's future population === | ||
Revision as of 03:29, January 3, 2023
Russia (formally the Russian Federation, in Russian: Российская Федерация, Rossiyskaya Federatsiya), is the largest country by area (17,075,200 square kilometers) and shares borders with more countries than any other state in the world giving it unique security concerns. Russia has the ninth largest population spanning from Eastern Europe to Northern Asia. Its capital is Moscow, and it is a federation of constituent governments.
Contents
Russia's strengths
Russia has:
1. It has national unity with high nationalism
2. Oil and gas
3. A lot of smart people
4. Produces a lot of wheat and agricultural products
5. A large percentage of people with traditional Russian Orthodox ideas
6. Some positive things in pre-Soviet Russian civilization that continues to this day (chess, ballet, etc.).
Russia's weaknesses
1. Lack of good governance. Lots of corruption and an authoritarian government with the Kremlin surrounded by big walls. Russia has a long history of corruption. Vladimir Putin's corruption is not some surprising fact of history (See: Corruption in Russia: A Historical Perspective). See: Vladimir Putin is a corrupt kleptocrat and an authoritarian
2. Russia's fertility rate of 1.58 births per woman is one of the lowest fertility rates in the world.[2] It's fertility rate is below the replacement rate of 2.1 births per woman.
Demographers estimate Russia will fall from being the 9th most populous country in the world to being the 17th by 2050.[2] And estimates indicate that Russia's population will drop from 2014's 142 million to 128 million by 2050.[2]
Russia will go out swinging (Ukraine, etc.), but its age demographics (which is among the worst in the world in terms of an aging population) and other problems will cause a cultural collapse in Russia in the 21st century (See: Peter Zeihan's demography series and Who will Dominate the Geopolitical System in this Decade?). See: Russia's fertility rate
3. It's poor state of public health (See: Russia's demographic crisis and its state of public health). Many of its men are alcoholics. Every year, 500,000 people die due to alcohol in Russia.[3] This is likely a cultural legacy of the atheistic Soviet Union. See: Atheism and alcoholism
4. Much of its land is in cold, inhospitable areas
5. Poor prospects to attract new people. In addition, many wealthy people and young men have fled Russia (See: Peter Zeihan's demography series).
6. It is bogged down in a war in Ukraine.
7. It is currently a pariah state in the West with many sanctions against it. And many Western corporations pulled out of Russia. Russia may have to resign itself to selling much of its oil/gas in the future at a discount and lower profit margin to countries in the Eastern World such as India and China (I expect the USA to ramp up its oil and gas production in the future via some Republican presidents, but Democrat presidents will cause somewhat of a drag on this process.).
8. Russia's persecution of Russian Protestants (See: Why Russia's religious persecution of Russian Protestants is not good for Russia).
9. According to US Department of State in 2017,[4] Muslims in Russia numbered 14 million or roughly 10% of the total population.
Demographic projections of Russia's future population
See also: Russia's fertility rate and Demographic projections of Russia's future population
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Demographers estimate Russia will fall from being the 9th most populous country in the world to being the 17th by 2050.[2] And estimates indicate that Russia's population will drop from 2014's 142 million to 128 million by 2050.[2]
The Jamestown Foundation's 2022 article Russia’s Demographic Collapse Is Accelerating notes:
| “ | Aleksey Raksha, an independent Russian demographer and perhaps the closest Russian counterpart to the late US expert Murray Feshbach, provides the most comprehensive discussion of these developments. He relies exclusively on the first results of the latest census, which were released earlier this summer (Vedomosti.ru, April 8), and a broader selection of demographic data that Rosstat, the Russian government’s statistical arm, has now released (Rosstat.gov.ru, August 2022), making it far harder for his words to be dismissed. The situation he outlines is devastating (Svoboda.org, August 9).
During the first five months of 2022, Russia’s population fell by 430,000, which far exceeded the figure for the same period in 2021 and one that points to another decline of more than one million people for 2022 as a whole. The 2021 figure reflects both the relationship of births and deaths among the permanent population and the size of migration flows. Last year, in-migration partially compensated for the greater number of deaths as compared to births, but this year, it has not. Instead, increased out-migration has contributed to the total population decline. The opening of the country to in-migration after the pandemic may lead to a slight improvement in the second half of 2022, but that will not be enough to compensate for the indigenous decline continuing into 2023 and throughout the coming decade (Osnmedia.ru, July 26).[5] |
” |
The journalist Isabelle Khurshudyan's 2020 article In Siberian coal country, signs of Russia’s shrinking population are everywhere. It ‘haunts’ Putin. notes:
| “ | A United Nations demographic report last year calculated that the “pessimistic” outlook for Russia is that the population will fall to 124.6 million by 2050 and to 83.7 million by 2100.
Raksha, the demographer, expects a bigger drop next year in another potential consequence of the pandemic. One indicator: Registered marriages this year through July were down 23 percent compared with the same period last year, according to Rosstat. The pandemic made things “unpredictable, and in such situations, people delay birth,” said Raksha, who worked for Rosstat until this summer. Putin’s solution: promising tax breaks for larger families and stipends for those who have kids.[6] |
” |
Bloomberg News reported on October 18, 2022:
| “ | Plans by Putin’s government had set the goal of starting to reverse the decline in the population in 2022 before growth should resume in 2030. Yet weeks before the mobilization was announced in September, an internal report drafted for a closed-door meeting showed officials were already concluding those targets were unrealistic.
Citing the consequences of the coronavirus and migration outflows, the report instead proposed a revision that envisaged a decrease of 416,700 people in 2030. Should military operations continue in the coming months, as expected, Russia may see less than 1.2 million births next year, the lowest in modern history, according to Igor Efremov, a researcher and specialist in demographics at the Gaidar Institute in Moscow.[7] |
” |
Russia's demographic crisis and its state of public health
Adam Gwiazda's article Demographic crisis in Russia states:
| “ | The state of public health is one of the most extreme aspects of the demographic crisis in Russia. As a result of the AIDS epidemic, alcoholism and the dreadful state of health care, in the years 2005-2015 the mortality rate in Russia was three times higher among men and twice as high among women as in other countries with a similar level of social and economic development. More than half of the deaths of Russians aged 15-54 were caused by alcohol abuse after the collapse of the USSR. It should be noted that even the increase in the income of the Russian population by about 80 per cent in the years 1999-2008 did not result in a decrease in the mortality rate. High Russian mortality is the result not only of “normally” treatable diseases, such as tuberculosis, but also of lifestyle: drinking vodka, smoking cigarettes and AIDS. Every year, 500,000 people die due to alcohol in Russia. This applies to both women and men. The drug problem is also huge, as the prices of drugs are lower than in Western countries.
Russia is also unable to cope with the prevention and treatment of cardiovascular diseases and cancer, which are the main cause of death. The problem is not only the lack of sufficient funds for health care (until mid-2005, about 4.2 per cent of GDP was allocated for this purpose, while in rich European countries it was on average 8-10 per cent of GDP), but also the country’s unfavorable social and economic situation, relatively low position of health and a long life on the Russian list of priorities, poverty, lack of responsibility for one’s own health, and bad habits.[8] |
” |
Russia's low fertility rate, aging population, projected working population and its potential impact on its economy
Russia's population is expected to age significantly over the next few decades.[9]
The World Bank's article Searching for a New Silver Age in Russia: The Drivers and Impacts of Population Aging states:
| “ | Over the next few decades, Russia’s population is expected to age significantly. Some of this aging will be due to the increasing life expectancy, which is a significant achievement. However, this trend, together with low fertility and the retirement of large numbers of people born in the 1950s are expected to reduce the working-age population by as much as 14 percent over the next 35 years.
A decline in Russia’s working-age population will certainly pose serious social and economic challenges – but it can also offer important opportunities. Pessimistic forecasts about the impacts of aging often assume that current behavior and institutions will continue unchanged in a future, older society. For example, since the early 1990s, increases in the working-age population have accounted for about one third of the growth in per capita GDP. Over the next few decades, without changes in individual behavior and government policies, a rise in the dependency ratio could reduce growth by 2 percentage points per year. One important channel is savings, which could plunge if lifecycle-based savings rates remain unchanged as Russia’s population ages. Aging could also substantially increase spending on health care and pensions, leading to protracted deficits that boost today’s debt-to-GDP ratio of 20% of GDP to over 100% by 2050. A more optimistic view is that individuals and firms will adapt to aging, and that policies can promote and speed up this adaptation process.[10] |
” |
An excerpt from the abstract for the 2016 journal article Aging in Russia published in the journal The Gerontologist states:
| “ | Russia has always been at an intersection of Western and Eastern cultures, with its dozens of ethnic groups and different religions. The federal structure of the country also encompasses a variety of differences in socioeconomic status across its regions... Social policy and legislation address the needs of older adults by providing social services, support, and protection. The retirement system in Russia enables adults to retire at relatively young ages—55 and 60 years for women and men, respectively—but also to maintain the option of continuing their professional career or re-establishing a career after a “vocation” period. Though in recent years the government has faced a range of political issues, affecting the country’s economy in general, budget funds for support of aging people have been maintained.[11] | ” |
User: Conservative's essays
See also
References
- ↑ Demographic crisis in Russia by Adam Gwiazda, 2019
- ↑ 2.0 2.1 2.2 2.3 2.4 Russian fertility rates fall to record lows on the back of a deteriorating economy and sanctions pressure, bne IntelliNews, 2022
- ↑ Demographic crisis in Russia by Adam Gwiazda, 2019
- ↑ RUSSIA 2017 INTERNATIONAL RELIGIOUS FREEDOM REPORT.
- ↑ Russia’s Demographic Collapse Is Accelerating by Paul Goble, Jamestown Foundation website, 2022
- ↑ In Siberian coal country, signs of Russia’s shrinking population are everywhere. It ‘haunts’ Putin, Washington Post by Isabelle Khurshudyan, 2020
- ↑ Putin’s War Escalation Is Hastening Demographic Crash for Russia, Bloomberg News, October 18, 2022
- ↑ Demographic crisis in Russia by Adam Gwiazda, 2019
- ↑ Searching for a New Silver Age in Russia: The Drivers and Impacts of Population Aging, World Bank, 2022
- ↑ Searching for a New Silver Age in Russia: The Drivers and Impacts of Population Aging, World Bank, 2022
- ↑ Aging in Russia by Olga Strizhitskaya, PhD,The Gerontologist, Volume 56, Issue 5, October 2016, Pages 795–799, https://doi.org/10.1093/geront/gnw007
