Fertility in Russia

Another presentation reviewed fertility trends in Russia since 1979.3 The total fertility rate climbed from 1.9 lifetime births per woman in the early 1980s to 2.2 per woman in 1987; it then began a steep decline, stabilizing at 1.4 births per woman in 1993 and 1994. The decline occurred among women of all ages, including those younger than 20, the only age-group whose fertility rate had increased steadily since the mid-1960s.

In recent years, childbearing has become increasingly common among younger women. The mean age of women giving birth fell from about 26 years through much of the 1980s to 24.5 in 1993. In 1991, the fertility rate for women aged 15-19 was higher than that for women aged 30 or older and approached the rate of women in their late 20s. The following year, women younger than 18 contributed 4% of all births, twice the proportion they had accounted for in 1987.

Results of an analysis by women’s year of birth confirm this trend. For example, whereas 18% of women born in 1959 had their first child as teenagers, 26% of those born in 1972 had given birth by age 20. Similarly, the proportion of women having a second birth by age 25 increased from 18% of those born in 1955 to 24% of those born in 1965.

Furthermore, in the 1980s, the government implemented a strong pronatalist policy, offering such incentives as paid maternity leave and a variety of benefits in public services and housing for families with at least three children. Some data indicate that women had their first three births at progressively younger ages and spaced them more closely than before as a result. The early 1990s, however, witnessed a reversal in the trend toward reduced birth intervals.

Russians are marrying at ever younger ages, according to the investigators; women’s mean age at marriage declined from about 26 in 1960 to 23 in 1980. Accompanying this change was a drop in the share of all births that occurred out of wedlock, from 14% to 11%. During the 1980s, however, the incidence of nonmarital childbearing began to climb, and by 1990, 18% of births occurred outside marriage.