The Demographic Situation in Ukraine: Present State, Tendencies, and Predictions

Abstract

The demographic situation in Ukraine is characterized by an accumulation of tendencies that are reaching crisis proportions. The population is decreasing, with an increase in the death rate among working-age people and a negative balance of external migration. Under these conditions, a deterioration in interethnic and interreligious relations in society is possible against a background of a worsening socioeconomic situation for most of the population. In this article, the basic indices characterizing both the current state and the trends of the demographic situation in Ukraine will be presented and analyzed. These include both the population statistics and the factors and consequences that can be derived from those statistics. One caution that needs to be taken into account regarding the statistics is the lack of a census on the background of active demographic processes, including migratory processes, for a considerable period of time.2 This gap is connected with several factors that followed the breakup of the USSR, the formation of independent states, and the transformation of their socioeconomic structure. This transformation included a reformation of the organs of state authority, among the functions of which is registering various population flows. In addition, the systems for collecting and processing information were also reformed, which has both resulted in a level of incompleteness in the register of information and made the data difficult to compare. As a result, only certain data for the year 2000 are used in this article, while the main data set used is limited to that for the year 1999.