International Migration in Russia: Dynamics, Policies, Forecast

Abstract

Large flows of migrants into low fertility countries increase the weight of international migration in the population dynamics. The current net migration inflow to Russia is about 350 thousand people per year. Migration hypotheses of the population projections include the assumption of constancy of this level until 2050; net migration of 50 thousand people per year; zero net migration and net migration at the level of 900 thousand people per year. Migration hypotheses are combined with the hypotheses of future trends in fertility, including the low, the middle and the high variants. With low fertility and zero net migration the population by 2050 will be reduced by almost half. Stable migration combined with low fertility will not prevent depopulation of the order of almost 1/3 by 2050. If fertility trend follows the high path and migration remains constant the population size will be restored in 10 years and then will increase by 10 per cent. Тo restore the population size by 2020 with slowly increasing fertility, approximately 1, 5 million people more should immigrate into Russia every year than emigrate from it.