What are the implications of the population decline?
By 2020, Russia's population is most likely to be smaller--according to Feshbach, it is very likely to decline from 146 million to 130 million in this timeframe--and with a higher median age than today's. Russia's State Committee for Statistics recently forecast that the population will shrink to 134 million by 2015.
As Russia's population ages, an increase in the dependency ratio is certain: by 2015 the ratio will be just four workers for every three nonworkers, with a dramatic shift among the nonworking population toward the elderly. The aging of the population and the increase in the dependency ratio suggest that domestic public and private capital available to refinance new investments may decline over the next two decades, underscoring and increasing the importance of creating the necessary conditions to attract investment from abroad.
3 main implications of population decline have been identified:
1 - A smaller, younger population means fewer nonworkers to support and a reduced demand for daycare and health care. At the same time, however, Russia will have to go through its structural transition in the context of an aging, and likely less productive, population. A smaller work force could result in a labor shortage, even if the potential female labor force were fully employed.
2 - From a military manpower perspective, Russia--which already lost much of its mobilization base with the independence of the former Soviet republics--will find it increasingly difficult to generate and deploy the large conventional forces it has historically relied upon to defend its borders. The manpower shortage will contribute to Russia's increasing reliance on its nuclear deterrent.
3 - Internal migration will result in changing regional dynamics and possibly in the concentration of the Russian population into a smaller number of regions. The population of some regions, such as the Far North, will most likely decline further as the Russian Government no longer continues to bear the high cost of maintaining infrastructure in areas where the economic base is not largely self sustaining. In the increasingly depopulated Far East, Moscow's concern about the security implications of Chinese in-migration will heighten.