Russia has moved to classify key demographic statistics following a dramatic collapse in its birth rate, which has plunged to levels not seen since the late 18th or early 19th century, according to a leading Russian demographer.

For decades, Russia has been experiencing a plunging birth rate and population decline, which appears to have worsened amid its ongoing invasion of Ukraine—with high casualty rates and men fleeing the country to avoid being conscripted to fight.

Projections estimate that Russia’s population will fall to about 132 million in the next two decades. The United Nations has predicted that in a worst-case scenario, by the start of the next century, Russia’s population could almost halve to 83 million.

    • Bravo@eviltoast.org
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      I think the implication is actually that there’s a marked dropoff of eligible young Russian men. To preserve a generation, Russia might soon need to use more North Koreans on the Ukrainian front, but that comes with its own problems and risks.

      It’s weird that Putin’s avoiding peace negotiations, as he more than anyone needs to find a way to scale back the war effort before his hold on power begins to waver. I get that he needs to save face while doing so, but he’s not gonna get conditions more favorable than a Trump administration, so the clock is ticking.

      • Ledericas@lemm.ee
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        i think kim stopped givign greedy putin more orcs. putin is running out of ethnic russians sooner or later.

      • ivanafterall ☑️@lemmy.world
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        Consider that he might not want it to end. If it ends, a wartime economy is no longer an excuse/distraction and he’d have to contend more with the disaster he’s created.

  • iAvicenna@lemmy.world
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    yea putin, fuck the world up and then complain that people are not making kids. we will all die in our own filth when the infrastructure collapses and you can wipe your ass with all that money and power

  • Randomgal@lemmy.ca
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    Kinda rough to have babies if most of your men are being turned into fertilizer.

  • TrackinDaKraken@lemmy.world
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    If AI and robots will take over so many jobs, why is a declining birthrate a bad thing, in the long term?

    • GreenKnight23@lemmy.world
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      because all wars are a war of attrition. the country with the largest military or the deepest pockets always wins.

    • GenosseFlosse@feddit.org
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      Because current society is built on the assumption that around 4 workers will support 1 person with social benefits like retirement money, healtcare or unemployment benefits. Robots are already used in many factories but don’t pay any of those. The robots will produce goods cheaper than humans, however corporations will own the robots, and still charge you the same price for the goods while receiving a larger margin.

    • Ledericas@lemm.ee
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      depends on where its decling, if its only like elderly left and the young not reproducing thats would be a problem.

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    It amuses me that world leaders pretend to be surprised by declining birth rates. They know perfectly well that it’s because of their and/or their neighbors policies. The environment is being poisoned, and possibly destroyed. People are reluctant to bring a child into this world, and I think they’re right to be.

    • Ledericas@lemm.ee
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      almost all of them avoiding the discussion why its happening instead of trying to enact anti-abortion laws, or punishing peopel for not having children.

    • samus12345@lemm.ee
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      “Nooooo! Keep pumping out babies to feed to the capitalism meat grinder!!”

    • WanderingThoughts@europe.pub
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      But it’s unthinkable for these leaders to change the policies that gave them the power and wealth they desire, so they’re gonna run with it until it falls apart, no matter the cost for everyone else.

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      And even ones that want kids take one look at the economy and their bank accounts, and decide to wait until both look better, because they want to be able to afford the kids a happy childhood. The worst thing for population growth is giving people the ability to choose when, if ever, to get kids, and an environment they don’t want to have them in.

      Two ways to fix that issue. Which one is used tells a lot.

    • joostjakob@lemmy.world
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      I haven’t read recent research on this, but at least until a decade or so ago, consciously not having children is a very small part of this. It’s more about economic outlooks and the immense pressure of expecting both parents of working full time and raising kids at the same time. Or wanting to have two kids, but putting off the decision so long that the chance of not having successful pregnancies rises a lot.

    • Wanderer@lemm.ee
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      Think its more high house prices and low wages. But the wealthy are more concerned with making money so immigration is at an all time high meaning house prices keep going up even when wages are kept below market value and training is non existent.

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    Seriously. If you are a woman, do you want to bring a child into this world?? Our climate is a disaster, and anyone who “could” do anything about it is doing everything they can to accumulate wealth at the expense of the planet. Fascism and misinformation is rampant. Geezus, people are telling Mothers that inoculations are bad. Think about that… polio vaccines that rescued generations of children from “iron lungs”, leg braces, and death. Those vaccines were developed from science. SCIENCE I’m an old lady now. If I was young and of child bearing years—I would not have children.

    • Zenith@lemm.ee
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      I’m a woman, with two kids, they’re not my biological children. I never wanted to have kids but other people are having kids and I figure why not love the kids already here? There’s plenty of kids to go around there’s no need for me to personally make a kid. If the kids are already here we should do as much as we can to make their lives good but if they’re not already here it should stay that way.

      • debil@lemmy.world
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        100% agreed. If possible, get a rescue kid. (In general, without getting into the nitty gritty details about the adoption processes around the world.)

      • BlackSheep@lemmy.ca
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        So, if you want to get snipped, does the doctor ask , “does your significant other agree with what you’re doing? Maybe they should be here during this decision”. Does that sound ridiculous?? Well, that’s what women deal with on a regular basis.

        • daq@lemmy.sdf.org
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          I hate to shit on your general point, but they absolutely do ask in this case.

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          Im 57, i tried to have a vasectomy at 18 and was refused here in Australia mutiple times over 2 years because “I would change mind” and I was told I would meet somone who would want to have kid with me and they’d be upset if i was unable to."

          I flew to Thailand in my late 20s and had it done at the end of a holiday there in a hospital in Bangkok, no pun intended.

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            Even in 2016 when I had mine done it had to be done abroad even though I lived in a country where any consenting adult can ask to be sterilised without legally mandated delays or any nanny state bullshit. I was poor otherwise I could have sued half the urologists in the country because they gave wrong reasons for refusing like me not having children and me being young.

            One also scammed me by sending me to a psychiatrist buddy of his who just went on to spend 30 minutes insulting my intelligence for wanting to not bring children into this world. I’m glad I learned the lesson at that age that just because people are doctors it doesn’t mean they’re not disrespectful and/or stupid.

            • iLStrix@lemmy.world
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              “vasectomy” - so he is a man. You’re not helping your cause by antagonizing half of the population (men).

      • BlackSheep@lemmy.ca
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        Not sure where you’re from. If a woman wants to sterilize in the U.S. it’s a HUGE problem: If you’re married they want the husband to verify your decision. If you’re a young woman, they’ll deny because “you may change your mind”. BUT, a man can get snipped no questions asked.

        • Alaik@lemmy.zip
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          It’s the false liability excuse. They think women will sue since it’s not as reversible. Really it’s management just justifying their jobs with bullshit policies.

          Start locking up management who try to dictate patient care for practicing medicine without a license, see how fast most things level out.

          That includes insurance groups, hospitals, and any other group who doesnt have an MD at the top level.

        • Saik0@lemmy.saik0.com
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          I’m a snipped man… there were a lot of questions.

          I don’t know who told you “no questions asked”, but that definitely doesn’t match my lived experience.

          • BlackSheep@lemmy.ca
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            OK, but did the Doctor insist that your significant other/wife must come in and agree to the procedure?? NO. You answered a lot of questions, and the procedure went forward. It was YOUR decision.

            • Saik0@lemmy.saik0.com
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              So I refute one specific point of your argument. Another commenter even says they were outright denied. And your sane and rational response is “well that doesn’t matter” and you downvote me even though I was adding to the topic/discussion that you brought up?

              Grow up dude.

              Unfortunately for your case, you’re still wrong. But that won’t change your mind regardless and I’m not interested in talking to someone who acts the way you are.

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            I was refused (tried a few tines from 18-20) and had it done overseas im my late 20s. Thay was decades ago though so it might have changed.

            Am Australian.

    • WhyJiffie@sh.itjust.works
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      yeah! that’s what I am thinking too, have been for years now. but at the same time babies are booming in the area (not russia, but east eu) so obviously a lot of people think differently.

      • Hanrahan@slrpnk.net
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        You say booming ? But every woman needs to have 2.1.on average to have a stable population, so “booming” would be 4-8 at least, per woman. Is it that high ? Hungary ?

        Australia’s first female member of it’s federal parliment had 13 kids for example, my mother was one of 8, I was one of three, my brother has 2, my sister and I none.

    • TheFonz@lemmy.world
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      I promise you, the last thing on the minds of Russian women in this moment is climate change

    • Ledericas@lemm.ee
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      he would probably send 70 more million before he admits defeat, probably not. as long as men keep going to the meat grinder he doesnt care.

        • Bruncvik@lemmy.world
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          I was permabanned from r/worldnews for this, due to racism, so I’m risking the same here. But there is a theory among armchair historians–which I tend to agree with–that Russians had been targets of regressive selective breeding for the past 450 years. Those who display any kind of individualism or independence (mainly educated, intellectuals, etc) have been selectively eliminated from the gene pool: via exile (best case scenario), or through prisons, labour camps or executions. After centuries of this, the share of independently thinking Russians in Russia is far lower than that of native population in Western European countries.

          This is very prominent in science and technology: many of the top inventors weren’t ethnic Russians, but were born or had ancestry in countries that have been under Russian dictate (and regressive evolution) for a much shorter time period. Sergei Korolev, the father of Russian space program was ethnic Hungarian. Russia “boasts” only 15 Nobel laureates in STEM fields since 1917, and only one of them (Nikolay Semyonov) was an ethnic Russian who wasn’t in exile.

          All this helps to explain why Russians are so passive in the face of authority. It also points at the fallacy of thinking that we can push them towards accepting western civilization and democracy in the short term. It will take a very long time and a lot of effort to bring them to the moral ideal of Western Europe.

          • Ledericas@lemm.ee
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            they have been through centuries of dictatorships, so they technically dont know any better, and its also indoctrination.

            i avoided that sub, after gaza/israeli conflict begin after catching a temp ban in '23. too much israeli bots were astrouturfing the subs, and banning people, and your comments are easy misconstrued there.

          • Dr. Moose@lemmy.world
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            I agree but not in genetic sense but more of a cultural sense imo.

            I grew up in Eastern Europe and witnesses soviet collapse and culture shift myself. It went from this obedient “no my problem” passive anger and misery to a society that actually cares for each other and is warm and optimistic which only started to regress recently because of fucking ruskies again.

            It’s so frustrating to see this great evil plague the world and pretend that it’s “1 bad putin” when the entire culture has been morphed into facilitating and growing this disgusting evil like rotting bread grows mold.

    • 5gruel@lemmy.world
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      Oh we are now upvoting posts that condemn a whole culture as evil. Very classy Lemmy.

      • TronBronson@lemmy.world
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        Evil like raping your subordinates on the battlefield or evil like kidnapping children and cultural genocide? Or evil like sit on your hands and allow your rulers to destroy you and world security for hundreds of years?

        • wpb@lemmy.world
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          I think the mods are doing an okay job here, but I also think it’s fair to judge the community by what they upvote. And before it was deleted, there were definitely more upvotes than downvotes on something very blatantly genocidal. And there’s still a comment up in this thread on some bizarre hick race science shit, again with a bunch of upvotes. Cartoonishly racist, still up, and with a bunch of upvotes. I think this does say sth about the community.

        • 5gruel@lemmy.world
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          Great example, I wouldn’t call the whole of german culture evil because of the third Reich.

    • wpb@lemmy.world
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      You’re literally rooting for the extinction of an ethnicity. Don’t conflate a people with their government. The folks in the Twin Towers did not deserve to die, regardless of all the horrible things their goverment has done. The folks at the October 7th festival did not deserve to die, regardless of the horrible things their government has done. Russians do not deserve to go extinct, regardless of the horrible things their government has done. Please try to keep your genocidal tendencies in check.

  • BlackSheep@lemmy.ca
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    It’s global. Who the fuck wants to procreate in a world that’s about run out of water??

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        it’s this stupid doomerism that thinks that we will run out of drinkable water and start wars.

        There’s good science that drinkable water is indeed in danger but the doomers ignore the fact that all of this argues about the price of water not the existance of drinkable water. It’ll be more expensive, but the market will create new technologies to filter and desalite water so eventually it’ll balance out.

        In fact, this might be a net good as currently water treatment technology has no investments because water is so plentiful. This means poor regions where water is actually a problem now will get this technology and some balance will be restored to the world.

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          Great, the fucking market that’s already so good at properly distributing food so people don’t starve is also going to handle our water needs. I have no idea why anyone would be panicking about this.

          • explodicle@sh.itjust.works
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            Or put another way… We’ve already got more than enough for everyone even with today’s technology. Modern scarcity is artificial, not physical.

            • Shanmugha@lemmy.world
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              And dying and depleting rivers are very fucking much physical. I may not see it, my son might not see it, but unless we start thinking as humans and act accordingly, wars for water will come

        • Merva@sh.itjust.works
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          How is this magic technology going to be freely implemented eveywhere and especially in the poorest parts of the world? You description of the mechanisms of invention and investing does not sound at all like how these things actually works in the world we are living in.

          • Dr. Moose@lemmy.world
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            I’m genuinely confused by your question. The same way all technology is being delivered? The bigger research market the cheaper is the product and water treatment is no different.

            Our top scientists are not solving water issues because there’s no market for it. African people who go 10km one way to the well don’t have the funding to fund this and in the grand scale of things this is such a small issue that it gains no attention and it’s easier to patch it with temporary solutions and existing inefficient technologies than to invent new stuff.

            This is a very well known problem in the charity scene that applies way beyond this water issue and it’s not some secret issue that nobody knows about it.

        • BlackSheep@lemmy.ca
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          I remember hearing that food engineering was going to solve the planet’s hunger problem. People are still starving, and the rich are becoming richer. Now I’m hearing about “water treatment technology”. Really? Rivers and lakes are drying up. There are unprecedented forest fires, floods, tornadoes, etc. Drinkable water will be more expensive?? WTF? What’s next?? We’re going to have to pay for breathable air?

          • Dr. Moose@lemmy.world
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            You’re building a straw man that is unrelated to the issue at hand. Sure rich hoarding and political issues are bad but we will not run out of water. Period.

            • Shanmugha@lemmy.world
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              Tell that to a river that got depleted by half in a decade or two, along with dying sole (edit: soil) around. Either we do something or next generations won’t live well, rich or not

            • howrar@lemmy.ca
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              Context will tell you that we’re talking about losing access to water. If people won’t procreate because they don’t have water, it makes no difference if it’s because we are literally all out of water or if someone else is hoarding it all. In both cases, there’s no access to water.

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            According to this…: https://www.chunkerowaterplant.com/news/water-desalination-cost-per-gallon The cost of desalination per gallon of seawater is “approximately $0.005 to $0.01”

            I would assume people would figure it’s cheaper to pay that cost than to fight wars over it. Most of the planet is covered in water. Like with food, these resource shortages are largely political. The hardest part is removing these power hungry parasites from power. Immense suffering is endured all because of these few billionaire pieces of radioactive shit.

            • Sylvartas@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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              That’s ignoring the environmental impact. You get brine on the other end that is basically wet salt iirc and if you release it in bulk you will fuck up the nearby environment

              • Halcyon@discuss.tchncs.de
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                Plus you have high energy costs for desalination. Solar energy might help, but the desalination process is slow and needs to run 24 hrs a day to produce enough water efficiently.

              • hark@lemmy.world
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                With sodium ion batteries becoming practical, I heard that this could actually become a side business for desalination plants to supply battery makers, but I don’t know how viable it is. Regardless, managing brine is still far less of an issue than fighting war over lack of water.

          • ZMoney@lemmy.world
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            Yeah every new technological solution has its associated ecological cost. Some are better than others. Guess which ones are the most profitable.

            There’s something called the Kuznets environmental curve that explains this pretty intuitively. It’s an optimistic forecast that I only buy when I’m in a good mood.

            https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kuznets_curve

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            “people are still starving” is an argument so bad as “there is still cancer” and “there are still traffic accidents”. Those issues are not boolean, the are quantifiable and are going down at a very optimistic rate.

      • Merva@sh.itjust.works
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        Some parts of the globe is going to run out of water, some areas of the globe are about to get way too much of it. You know, climate change and all that.

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      Buddy, that stuff falls out of the sky. It may be more scarce in the future, but we’re not going to run out.

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        I’m sure nothing bad will happen if we just let the rain water all the crops. That’s probably enough right?

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    It used to be if a nuclear bomb went off, all planes would be grounded. Now, they’re going to use small yield nuclear weapons, but we know about the escalation ladder, so regardless if it’s a tiny nuke, it’s a nuke. Things just start or continue to escalate while plane companies are now getting nuke insurance because they’re still going to fly planes as the nukes are shooting. I don’t know if you got a… Entopic… pregnancy… like the pregnancy that gets stuck in your… phleopian tube… or something… if you could actually just go to a doctor and have that dealt with… you know, because… the pregnancy is not viable… and it’s most likely gonna kill you. I mean if I was a gal I’d say hell no. And honestly if I was educated and I had money I’d be out of here. If you Google mass shootings the violence project, you’ll see that a lot of the mass shooters, their motivations were economic issues. And that kind of explains a lot of this right wing violence being done by 20-something-year-olds. Young, dumb and full of cum, and also barefoot and pregnant. There’s also, I guess, studies that say that younger women are dating older men because they’re more mature, but I really think it’s just because their wallets are more mature and who could really blame the women? These kids live in these horrible situations with nothing to live for working at Mickey D’s as ungrateful boomers come in and scream at them because their fries are cold. We’re just going back in time as the boomers just fucking gaslight us, as they lived in the most economically prosperous time, you know? Hedonistic, arrogant, middle manager, PhD, magical thinking ladder pulling pigglet whatever the fuck’s. Always telling you’re overreacting. But just wait, once we get there, we’ll get to that point. Were it eventually will click, and you’ll see a fear in their eye, and possibly a tear. Zippty doo dah zippy ehh my oh my what a wonderful day.

        • Lit@lemmy.world
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          4 days ago

          Sigh… putin is leting china leech russia. Putin is a sellout putting russians into misery with his personal obsession to increase russia territories and colonies.

          Russia is the last colonial empire, still expanding territories in this day and age.