Can Russia Outlaw Childlessness?

In April, President Trump, who has expressed concerns about the US’s low fertility rate, was asked about a proposal to provide a $5,000 “baby bonus” to every American woman who gives birth. His response: “Sounds like a good idea to me.” The average woman must give birth to 2.1 children to maintain a population, according to traditional assumptions. The US number is 1.6.

Industrialized countries around the world are grappling with a similar problem, and for some, it poses an existential threat. In China, long touted as the world’s most-populous nation, the average woman now gives birth to less than one child, and by 2100, its population is projected to fall from a reported 1.4 billion to 525 million. A 60 percent loss in population is as devastating as a plague.

The situation is equally grim in Russia, where the fertility rate has been falling steadily for two decades, a situation the Kremlin describes as “catastrophic.” This decline in birth rates accelerated dramatically during the war in Ukraine, which has injured, killed, or exiled millions of young men who might have become fathers.

Governments respond to such threats in different ways. Many countries have enacted the equivalent of Trump’s “baby bonus.” In China, which for decades punished couples for having more than one child, the government is scrambling to provide pro-natal workplace policies and expanded childcare services.

In Russia, however, the government has taken an especially notable step by imposing restrictions on speech. Specifically, speech that encourages people not to have children or praises a child-free life, labeled as “child-free propaganda,” is subject to fines of up to 400,000 rubles for individuals and 5 million rubles for businesses.

Ahead of the Russian vote on the measure, the Duma’s speaker was quoted as saying, “Without children, there will be no country. This ideology will lead to people stopping giving birth to children.” The goal of the legislation, he said, was to ensure that “new generations of our citizens grow up oriented toward traditional family values.”

Such efforts to restrict speech reflect a willful tone-deafness. While speech discouraging parenthood may be a factor in population decline, Russians face far more substantial reasons not to have children. For one thing, bringing a child into the world is a profound expression of hope, and Russians have many reasons to feel hopeless.

The fiscal outlook for Russia is bleak. Its economy is based on agriculture and raw materials, and what industrial base it has, has shifted largely to a wartime model. Inflation is rising, and high interest rates make it difficult for young couples to afford the sort of housing they associate with raising a family.

The educational system has been degrading for decades. Levels of funding and numbers of teachers have been falling. The curriculum has been restructured, promoting government propaganda at the expense of free speech, critical thinking, and research. Millions of well-educated people have left the country, reflecting a profound brain drain.

The war in Ukraine has taken its own toll, in ways that extend far beyond a million battlefield casualties. As the war drags on, prospective parents worry that the conflict will move increasingly onto Russian soil, that assaults on oil and gas fields could quickly destabilize the economy, and that their sons will face conscription.

Another sign of Russian hopelessness is high rates of alcoholism, drug abuse, and violent crime, all driven higher by the war and all disproportionately affecting males. Healthy life expectancy for men, which was barely above 60 years before the war and seven years below that of women, has almost certainly dropped far below that level now.

The situation is almost certainly worse than it appears, because Russia has effectively stopped collecting, analyzing, and releasing accurate statistics on its population, a move emulated by China. One thing, however, is certain: deaths exceed births in both Russia and China, and both nations are in the midst of a population collapse.

In both Russia and China, the truth about birth and death rates takes a backseat to political calculations, with leaders judging it best to suppress information that might cast the regime in a bad light. It is likely that other related statistics, such as abortion rates, have also long been suppressed for political purposes.

This gets at the core of the problem. Without free and independent institutions such as universities and news media, there are few checks on government officials’ ability to portray matters in terms they find convenient, rather than the way things really are. If the facts begin to paint an unflattering picture, they are suppressed or fudged as needed.

One dangerous implication, however, is that those who attempt to portray the situation as it actually is — in other words, who speak the truth — are often punished, and soon even those at the highest levels of government, including the advisors of heads of state, are unable or unwilling to deal in reality.

As a result, leaders such as Vladimir Putin and Xi Jinping end up living in an information bubble, basing their decisions on inaccurate portrayals of situations they are attempting to address. For example, Putin likely had little idea how ill-prepared the Russian military, riddled by decades of corruption, was to invade Ukraine. 

Similar problems beset both countries’ efforts to respond effectively to their demographic collapses. Over time, an authoritarian begins to suppose that everything depends on him and that his word is law. He supposes that his decrees can end speech favoring childlessness or reverse a decades-long one-child policy on a dime.

In fact, however, the truth lies elsewhere — namely, in the inherently limited capacities of a highly centralized, autocratic government. The Russian regime may be able to enact penalties for praising a child-free life, but it cannot prevent young adults from seeing for themselves, nor from viewing their government with cynicism and their future as hopeless.