Russia To Shut Schools Amid Slump In Birthrate
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Russia plans to close more than 700 schools this year because of a slump in the number of school-going children, according to a Wednesday report by the AFP, as the country, sometimes known as the Dying Bear, struggles to a halt a steep decline in population since the collapse of communism.
Russia plans to close more than 700 schools this year because of a slump in the number of school-going children, according to a Wednesday report by the AFP, as the country, sometimes known as the Dying Bear, struggles to a halt a steep decline in population since the collapse of communism.
“We plan to close 733 schools this year, including 464 in the Central [Federal] District,” said Gennady Onishchenk, Russia’s chief public health official. “You understand the reason: there are not enough children.”
Speaking to journalists in Moscow, Onishchenko said over 13 million children in Russia would go to 44,000 schools on September 1. “Over 13 million school-age children will start studying in the new academic year, including over 1.5 million first-graders,” he said.
“For some reason we have forgotten why we came into the world and we came with only one aim: to create new life, to continue our line,” said the outspoken Onishchenko, who has three children.
Russia has witnessed an unsettling trend of long-term population decline since the mid-1990s, with alarming mortality rate statistics, falling fertility rates, and high rates of emigration as economic conditions plummeted in the nineties.
The decline has also traditionally been blamed on alcoholism, poor healthcare and poverty.
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Following the collapse of communism, Russia’s fertility rate had fallen to a catastrophic low of 1.17 births to every woman of child-bearing age by 1999, far below the minimum replacement rate of 2.1 required to maintain population stability.
Since then, Russia’s birthrate has edged upward to 1.7 due in large part to pro-family policies, which were initiated in an emergency response to the pending demographic crisis.
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According to Rosstat, the country’s official statistics agency, Russia saw 1.90 million births in 2012, up from 1.79 million in 2011, though there were still slightly more deaths than births.
Russia has a population of 143 million but the agency predicts that the population could fall to 130 million by 2030 under a worst-case scenario. Demographic experts, including the United Nations Population Division, warn that the population could fall by as much as 30 percent by 2050.
Low population predictions have been a key factor in economic forecasts which see Russia growing much more slowly over the next 20 years than China, Brazil and India.
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