Demographically, too, Russia is an anomaly. The country has both a highly educated population, comparable to Western nations, but with a life expectancy close to that of Haiti when it comes to its young men. Above all, the decline of the population, which Vladimir Putin has not succeeded in stopping despite a costly pronatalist policy, is proving increasingly incompatible with the will to power and the imperialist ambitions displayed by the Kremlin.
Economist and author of numerous books or articles on demography, Nicholas Eberstadt holds the chair of political economy at the American Enterprise Institute, a liberal think tank based in Washington. For L’Express, he deciphers the Kremlin’s contradictions and the waste of Russian potential in terms of human resources, which translates into a great weakness in terms of patents filed or scientific articles published.
L’Express: According to you, Vladimir Putin’s growing risk-taking on the geopolitical level, as we can see with this war in Ukraine, is undoubtedly a way of compensating for the decline of Russia’s national potential. For what ?
Nicholas Eberstadt: Since 2001, Putin has made the declining demographics of the Russian Federation a national security issue. Since that time, it has also explicitly reduced the strategic threshold from which nuclear weapons can be used. If we follow Putin’s evolution, from his very offensive speech at the Munich security conference in 2007, to the invasion of Ukraine, via the war in Georgia in 2008, and the annexation of Crimea in 2014, it is clear that he is taking more and more risks. This can be seen as a policy attempting to compensate for the loss of power of the Russian state. I’m not Putin’s shrink, I can’t tell you what exactly is going on in his head. But, for an observer, it is really striking.
Putin has a strange approach to population policy. He’s a bit like a rancher who thinks it’s more important to have a high number of cattle than to have a healthy, valuable herd. He thus carried out a policy aimed at increasing births and the number of Russian citizens, even stealing people from other territories. The annexation of Crimea allowed it to add 2.3 million inhabitants to the Russian Federation. But Putin pays very little attention to human capital, and does nothing to establish the economic conditions that could unlock the full value of the human resource at his disposal.
You describe Russia as a “highly educated, low human capital” society. Why this paradox?
If you look at the most basic of education statistics, namely the number of years of education, Russia compares to OECD countries. According to Unesco estimates, it has one of the highest shares of adults aged 25 and over with post-secondary or higher education. In contrast, in all Western countries, more education is associated with significant gains in health and life expectancy. In 2019 – even before the Covid-19 pandemic, which worsened the situation in Russia – the life expectancy for a 15-year-old Russian teenager was almost the same as that of a Haitian teenager. You heard it right. According to the WHO, that year the life expectancy for a 15-year-old Russian was 53.7 years. Which means that its chances of survival were lower than in half of the countries that the UN nevertheless places in the category of “least developed countries”. [PMA].
“No need to be Hercule Poirot to know that vodka is an essential ingredient of Russian society…”
How can this anomaly be explained in terms of mortality?
The structure of deaths is different in Russia from that of poor countries. In the latter, the main causes of death are infectious diseases or those linked to poverty and malnutrition. This is not the problem in Russia, which, as I told you, has in terms of education a population comparable to a country like Belgium. The main causes of death in Russia, according to official statistics, are related to cardiovascular diseases and injuries, which include suicides, murders, accidents… In 2019, mortality due to cardiovascular diseases -vascular was almost three times higher than for the countries of the European Union. With regard to injuries and poisonings, the WHO estimates that death rates in 2008 for working-age Russian men were four times higher than their income levels would have suggested.
I cannot tell you the reasons for this Russian mystery. I have hypotheses, but I can’t prove them. Of course, you don’t have to be Hercule Poirot to know that vodka is an essential ingredient in Russian society. Until very recently, they even produced bottles of vodka that could not be closed. There is a special way of drinking alcohol in this country, which can be linked to mortality from cardiovascular disease or injury. But there are probably also psychosocial factors, such as stress, that come into play.
From the mid-2000s until 2015, Putin seemed to have succeeded in reversing population decline, with a rise in fertility rates. But it did not last…
I know that pronatalist policies have good press in France, and I don’t want to offend you. [Rires.] But, in general, these policies are expensive and have very little success, even if, on the other hand, they can have beneficial effects for the well-being of families. We have seen in many countries that such a policy temporarily increases the number of births. People think, “I’m going to have my second child now, since there are financial benefits.” But this was later followed by a decline in births! These policies only have a temporary effect, rather than changing mentalities and the number of children that parents want to have. In Russia, the surge in births between 2008 and 2014 coincided with pronatalist efforts by the Kremlin. But, after 2015, these rates fell again, so much so that, even before the Covid, they were in no way distinguishable from other states of the former Soviet bloc which had not made use of such onerous pronatalist policies. .
There is little reason for this trend to reverse, especially as the Russian population ages. Even the projections of Rosstat, the federal statistics agency in Russia, do not envisage that the number of births can compensate for that of deaths in the years 2020 and 2030.
How fast do you think the Russian population will decline in the coming years?
The big unknown is migration, which no serious demographer can predict. But even if public health improves in Russia and mortality converges with the rest of Europe, there will still be more deaths than births in the next decade. . The only thing that could stabilize the Russian population, therefore, is significant immigration, or the taking over of populations from foreign countries.
The war in Ukraine has also pushed young Russian graduates to emigrate. There is significant potential in Russia in terms of talent, but it is held back by kleptocracy.
Will the soldiers who die in Ukraine have an impact on this demographic decline?
It is a tragedy for their families and loved ones. But more than 2 million people die in Russia every year. If 150,000 die as a result of war – and I don’t know if that’s the right number – they are of course young men who may not have had children. But, from an arithmetic point of view, these losses cannot be compared to those due to the Covid pandemic, which, in Russia, were even more catastrophic than in the United States.
“We can imagine that Russia will become a middle power at the world level”
According to you, in our modern world, a superpower can no longer be satisfied with natural resources such as hydrocarbons. For what ?
It is clear that Putin, in his policy, gives priority to the extraction of natural resources. No doubt because it is easier to exploit the soil than to stimulate human resources. The oil kleptocracy that now rules the Russian Federation creates wealth for oligarchs from these raw materials. But it does not exploit the skills of its educated population. One of the strangest features of the country is its low number of filed patents. During the period 2002-2020, Russia, which has the ninth largest population in the world, ranked only 25th on the US Patent Office charts, behind countries such as Norway and Finland, and just ahead of New Zealand. To give you an idea, it is at the same level as an American federal state like Alabama, whose population is 5 million, compared to more than 140 million for Russia. The number of articles published in scientific journals and reviewed by peers has stagnated in Russia for twenty years, unlike the rest of the world. And there is almost no wealth created by Russian inventions.
All of this data suggests that there is something wrong with Russia. Anyone who has had contact with intelligent and educated Russians knows that it is not due to a lack of talent. It’s the fault of the system.
Will Russia have to revise its geopolitical ambitions downwards, because of this demographic decline as well as its weaknesses in terms of innovation?
The Kremlin’s current ambitions do not match the country’s means. Russia’s human and economic resources are in decline, while wealth, talent and education levels are growing all over the world. A country like Germany is on the verge of demographic decline, but it continues to grow more prosperous. In Russia, there is both a demographic decline and a straitjacket that drastically restricts human resources.
This contradiction between Russia’s ambitions and the reality of its means cannot continue forever. One can imagine that the country becomes a middle power at the world level. But this transition can be done peacefully or violently. I hadn’t anticipated the fall of the Berlin Wall and the end of the Soviet Empire, which took place almost seamlessly. Sometimes there are good surprises. But I don’t know.
China also seems to be already beginning its demographic decline, while the American population should continue to grow during the 21st century thanks to immigration. Does demographics represent a significant advantage for the United States against its Russian and Chinese rivals?
In terms of demographics and human resources, the United States has a strong advantage that should continue. But, as an American, I am by no means complacent when I see the problems in our society. We have a health crisis and problems with our education system. Moreover, we are divided on whether we should become an isolationist country, a kind of fortress, or on the contrary play an important role in the world order. There are therefore many uncertainties for the future. But I do not see how, in terms of demography and human resources, China could be in a position to replace the United States as the world’s leading power in the decades to come.
Personally, I am convinced that a North American league bringing together Canada, the United States and Mexico would have immense potential, due to the incredible human resources in this region of the world. In Europe, you succeeded after the Second World War in overcoming national antagonisms, particularly between France and Germany. I hope we can do that in North America as well. I don’t know if it’s politically feasible. But, from a demographic point of view, a strengthened alliance between these three countries would represent a very good deal.