Russia’s population is forecast to almost halve within a generation as deaths from suicide and alcoholism escalate and the birthrate falls against a background of economic decline.
The number of Russians could shrink from 143.5 million to 80 million by 2050 unless the government takes urgent action, according to Yury Krupnov, the head of the Institute for Demography, Migration and Regional Development.
Low incomes even in regions close to Moscow plus widespread pessimism over the future meant that young people were reluctant to start families, he said.
“Average salaries in the Kostroma region are 20,000 roubles (£184) a month,” he told the gazeta.ru news website. “What’s a guy supposed to do with that?”
The country’s death rate rose by 5.2 per cent in the first six months of the year compared with the same period in 2014, according to figures released by the health ministry yesterday.
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A key factor is a rise in the death rate among those aged 30 to 45. Veronika Skvortsova, the health minister, blames alcoholism for many of the deaths.
“The horror of the situation is that in 70 per cent of the cases, post-mortem examinations discover alcohol in the dead patients’ blood,” she said, adding that 40 per cent of the deaths of Russian children before the age of one were because their drunken mother had crushed them with her body while they slept.
Alcohol is also linked to the deaths of nearly a third of Russian men, according to a report released this year by the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development.
Average life expectancy for Russian men is 63, a year lower than in Rwanda, according to figures from the World Health Organisation (WHO).
Russian woman can expect to live 12 years longer than their male counterparts. Only Belarus and war-stricken Syria have greater discrepancies in life expectancy between the sexes.
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Alcohol has also been linked to what Ms Skvortsova said was an unexpected rise in suicide rates. In some parts of Siberia the suicide rate is 60 per 100,000 residents, three times higher than the figure considered critical by the WHO, according to experts from Russia’s main forensic psychiatry centre.
The country also has the highest suicide rate among teenagers in Europe.
Russia has also been rocked by a spate of suicides by cancer patients in recent months. In March the government’s media watchdog tried to force news outlets to stop reporting that a lack of access to pain relief had forced many sufferers to take their own lives.
The health ministry blamed medical clinics, which it said were not dispensing painkillers properly.
A population fall of the scale forecast by Mr Krupnov would be remarkable by peacetime standards. Thirty million Chinese died during Mao’s Great Leap Forward out of a population of 650 million. Other experts agreed that Russia faced serious demographic challenges, but were more cautious in their predictions on population decline.
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A collapse in global oil prices and tough western sanctions over the Kremlin’s actions in Ukraine have pushed Russia’s economy into recession for only the second time during President Putin’s 15-year-rule.
Official figures indicate that 23 million Russians are living beneath the poverty line of about £100 a month — three million more than last year.
The leader of Russia’s Orthodox Church sought to offer spiritual solace. Patriarch Kirill, who has been photographed wearing a £19,000 Breguet watch, told Russians this week to concentrate on spiritual wealth, rather than material affluence.
Not everyone is convinced. “A lot of people just want to top themselves when they think about everything that’s wrong with our country,” Yelena, a Muscovite grandmother, sighed.