Demographic challenge of Russia

Government response

Plummeting population

Rate of natural growth

“Maternal capital” policy

$10,000 for every other born or adopted child, except the firstborn (first adopted)

Announced May 2006. Effective 2007-2016

“Maternal capital” can be used:

To improve housing conditions

To improve education level (i.e. to get higher education)

To increase the mother’s pension fund

Siberian state

Moscow

Models

fixed effects model

Ystateyear = β0+ βpensionXpensionstate+ βhousingXhousingstate + βavsalaryXavsalarystate + βunemploymentXunemploymentstate + βyear + ustateyear

Fixed effects model birthrate | Coef. Std. Err. t P>|t| [95% Conf. Interval]

-------------+----------------------------------------------------------------

sq m o/c | -5.737728 .268442 -21.37 0.000 -6.264812 -5.210645

pension | .0018929 .0040903 0.46 0.644 -.0061384 .0099242

av sal p/c | .0026523 .0008879 2.99 0.003 .0009089 .0043957

2000 | -12.68872 6.37999 -1.99 0.047 -25.21576 -.1616748

2001 | -8.482731 5.550366 -1.53 0.127 -19.38082 2.415357

2002 | -2.025524 4.668346 -0.43 0.665 -11.19177 7.140725

2003 | 1.766027 4.047924 0.44 0.663 -6.18203 9.714084

2004 | 3.245498 3.486977 0.93 0.352 -3.601147 10.09214

2005 | -.6859826 2.826695 -0.24 0.808 -6.236169 4.864204

2007 | 6.447197 3.673453 1.76 0.080 -.7655904 13.65998

Conclusions

Some of the government policy targeted objectives appear to be positively related to the birthrate, but others are related negatively

Hard to dissect the effects of increasing incomes and the new government policy

The overall effect of targeted policy objectives on birthrate appears to be small

Ideal dataset

• Control and experimental group of homogeneous states

• All possible variables, such as poverty level, culture, religion, etc.

• Longer period of observation