Depopulation in the regions of Russia by the beginning of 2020

Abstract

The article summarizes the natural increase / decrease in the population of the regions and macroregions of the Russian Federation for 1992-2019. Depopulation is a steady natural population decline, it's characteristic of most European territories (countries or parts thereof), whose population was heavily affected in World War II. This applies to both sides of the conflict — and fascist Germany (as well as militaristic Asian Japan), on the one hand; and the territories of modern Poland, the Republic of Belarus, Ukraine, the European part of the Russian Federation, parts of the former Yugoslavia, on the other hand. As a result, since the 1970s the population of these territories began to enter a period of depopulation, the excess of mortality over fertility. This happened as a result of a downward demographic wave, the so-called «first echo of the Second World War», as well as due to global trends of declining birth rates in the entire developed and rapidly developing world. In general, over the 28 years of the post-Soviet period from the beginning of 1992 to the beginning of2020, depopulation covered all European regions of Russia with the exception of 5 republics of the North Caucasus and the Republic of Kalmykia. A somewhat different picture was observed beyond the Ural Range. Here, the depopulation in most large industrial regions was primarily due to the post-Soviet migration outflow of the population to the European part of the country — to the capital regions and plains of Southern Russia with a favorable climate. Positive natural growth was only in the oil and gas bearing Tyumen oblast, the Republic of Yakutia (Sakha), Chukotka Autonomous Okrug, as well as in the republics of Southern Siberia, whose indigenous population professes Buddhism. The article presents an analysis for each of the typical groups of Russian regions, provides statistics for 28 years of the demographic (reproductive) development of territories, substantiates conclusions, among which the main one is the following. The decrease in the volume of current and upcoming demographic human losses in Russia depends on the consistency, scientific justification, efficiency, effectiveness and selectivity of the country's demographic policy.