Thursday, November 6, 2014

Window on Eurasia: Migrants to Moscow Distorting Demographic Trends There and in Russia’s Regions


Paul Goble

 

            Staunton, November 6 – Migration from Russia’s regions to Moscow has had one impact that so far has attracted little notice: it has boosted birthrates in the Russian capital while reducing them in the regions from which the migrants come, a combination that understates the continuing demographic challenges facing the Russian government.

 

            Writing in “Gazeta,” Alla Tydynk, a researcher at the Russian Academy of Economics and State Service, notes that recent increases in birthrates in Moscow which are the result of the influx of migrants have come at the expense of birthrates in the non-Russian areas from which the migrants come (gazeta.ru/comments/2014/10/30_a_6283469.shtml).

 

            They thus tend to make the demographic situation look better if increasingly challenging for the still predominantly Russian capital and less threatening to the center as a result of the way in which outmigration has slowed the growth in the increasingly Muslim regions of the North Caucasus and the Middle Volga.

 

            In-migration to Moscow not only more than compensated for the decline in the numbers of indigenous Muscovites over the last 15 years, but it also had the effect of reducing the average age in the capital, thereby increasing the share of Moscow women in prime child-bearing age cohorts and increasing the percentage of those who were migrants, Tyndyk says.

 

            What is happening becomes clear, she continues, if one examines figures for those born in the 1970s. There are now “about 800,000” of these in Moscow, of which only “a few more than 500,000” are natives of the city. According to the last census, this cohort bore about a million children. Of these, immigrants were responsible for 40 percent.

 

            About 100,000 of the migrant children now live outside the borders of Moscow, but 300,000 of “the children of new Muscovites have become residents of Moscow” and are likely to remain there. In “greater Moscow” which includes the surrounding oblast, the disproportion of migrant children to the offspring of indigenous groups is even greater.

 

            Polls show, Tyndyk continues, that the migrants want two or three children, far more than native Muscovites do,but that in fact, their fertility rate is only slightly higher than that of the Muscovites, 1.4 children per life time per woman for the generation born in the 1960s than 1.3 for native Muscovites in the same cohort.

 

            Thus, the Moscow scholar says, “the young internal migrants are having a favorable impact on the demographic future of Moscow,” but they are doing so “at the expense of the regions” from which they came because their exit has reduced the number of women in this cohort there.

 

            But if Moscow is a winner in this competition in terms of demographic growth, it now faces more burdens such as providing pre-schools, kindergartens and regular educational institutions for the immigrant children, something the government lacks either the funds or the will to do.

 

            Unless that changes, Tyndyk says, the lack of such opportunities will become “a problem for the demographic well-being of Moscow,” one that can only be addressed by taking into far greater consideration these demographic differences among the various regions and republics of the Russian Federation.

 

No comments:

Post a Comment