Putin vows to halt Russia's population plunge with babies, immigrants

According to Putin, families with more than three children would receive housing priorities and a special allowance of 7,000 rubles (about $250) per child monthly, while other state benefits would make it easier for working women to find daycare, adjust their working schedules to maternal demands, and upgrade their professional qualifications.

"Many families with three children are living in poverty and, while you can't actually feed a child with 7,000 rubles a month, it's better than nothing," says Zhanna Zaynchkovskaya, an expert with the independent Center for Migration Studies in Moscow.

But she says the recent uptick in birth rates had little to do with social policies and are mainly the result of a demographic bulge of women born in the 1980s having children. "Rising birth rates were a very short term tendency," and in about two years, when the far fewer numbers of women born in the 1990s begin having families, they will drop again, she adds.

Can Russia attract outsiders?

Putin's other main idea is to stimulate immigration, especially by luring Russian-speakers from former Soviet countries and the Russian diaspora to return home. He writes that an influx of 300,000 annually could drive major population increase. But, he admits, that past programs to get ethnic Russians to resettle in Russia "have worked inefficiently… we need to revisit this issue and develop a more ambitious set of measures to support people who want to return to their historic homeland."

However, an opinion poll conducted by the independent Levada Center in Moscow last July found that 22 percent of all adult Russians would like to emigrate from Russia. Among categories of more highly educated, youthful, and economically successful Russians, an average of about a third want to leave.

"This article of Putin's really should be read as a pre-election statement and nothing more," says Anatoly Vishnevsky, director of the Institute of Demography at Moscow's Higher School of Economics and one of the authors of the massive 2009 UN-sponsored report, "Russia Facing Demographic Challenges," which is the most comprehensive study ever done about Russia's population crisis.

"I would be glad to see Russia's population grow as Putin plans, but 154 million by 2050 is simply not a realistic goal," he says. "Even if the target of 300,000 immigrants can be reached, it won't even compensate for the natural loss of the population."

While Russia might be able to attract huge numbers of immigrants from neighboring China and Central Asia, Putin makes clear that he is talking about Russian-speakers who are willing to "embrace our culture and our values" – though he adds that Russia might be open to foreign "skilled professionals and promising young people" as well.

"There are not enough culturally Russian people left out there; most who wanted to come here already have," says Yevgeny Gontmakher, a senior expert with the independent Institute of Social Development in Moscow. "A broader immigration policy would have to deal with the fact that Russia is a very xenophobic society. It would create more problems than it solved," he says. 

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