Russia will leave the top ten most populous countries //Photo from the website Demography.ru
By 2050, Russia's population will shrink by 33 million people and amount to 107.8 million. Such frightening data are contained in the recently presented report of the UN Development Programme (UNDP) "Overcoming Barriers: Human Mobility and Development."
The main cause of extremely high mortality among Russians is alcoholism. According to international experts, more than half of deaths of Russians aged 15 to 54 are in one way or another related to alcoholism. It is the immoderate consumption of alcohol-containing liquids, in the experts' view, that has led to the average life expectancy of a Russian man being only 60 years. Meanwhile, in developed countries, the average man lives to 76.5 years, and in developing countries to 65.4. Only the poorest countries in the world, with a figure of 54.6 years, give a head start to Russian males.
The problem of high mortality is dangerous not only from a demographic point of view, but also from an economic one. The consequence of rapid population decline will be an inevitable slowdown in economic growth, because there will simply be no one to work. Hence the quite obvious recommendations of the UNDP.
Russia needs reform of both public health and lifestyle. Alcoholism must cease to be the norm of life. In addition, Russian authorities should come to terms with the fact that there will not be enough own citizens for all state needs, and open borders for foreign labor. "Thanks to migrants, it is possible to compensate for the labor shortage arising from population decline and partially saturate future demand for unskilled workers through legal channels. Reforms of migration policy should ensure that migrants have their basic rights respected and access to basic services," the report says.
But if the fact that one should drink less will not be disputed even in a detox center, as for migration policy, Russian authorities considered the UN recommendations inappropriate. "It feels like the UN report was prepared in 2006, but is being released only now due to some bureaucratic reasons," Konstantin Poltoranin, deputy head of the Department of International and Public Relations of the Federal Migration Service (FMS), told Interfax.
"The problem is not the lack of legal migration channels, but that the countries of origin often do not train qualified personnel and do not provide their citizens with the opportunity to study Russian. It is the lack of legal culture among the migrants themselves and ignorance of the Russian language that leads to violations of their rights in the course of labor relations," Konstantin Poltoranin said. "What barriers are we talking about, if we have a visa-free regime with almost all CIS countries?" he wondered, apparently unaware that after visa-free entry, a person has only three days to obtain registration at the place of residence and that obtaining a legal work permit is practically impossible. According to Poltoranin, there are currently about 5 million migrants in Russia. Meanwhile, according to various estimates, the number of illegal migrants ranges from 5 to 15 million people.
"Temporary labor migration will not solve demographic problems. As for permanent migration as a means of solving demographic problems, currently draft laws are being prepared to facilitate obtaining a residence permit in Russia for highly qualified migrants from abroad," a FMS representative said. But Russia cannot retain even its own highly qualified personnel, let alone win the competitive struggle with developed countries to attract "white-collar workers" from abroad.