Posted 22 сентября 2021,, 08:20

Published 22 сентября 2021,, 08:20

Modified 24 декабря 2022,, 22:36

Updated 24 декабря 2022,, 22:36

Know-how from the Cabinet of Ministers to improve demographics: propaganda instead of money

Know-how from the Cabinet of Ministers to improve demographics: propaganda instead of money

22 сентября 2021, 08:20
Фото: kulturologia.ru
The government approved an action plan to improve demographics for the period from 2021 to 2025. The tasks are colossal, but the methods of the Cabinet raise many questions. Especially in terms of meeting the scale of the goal.

Victoria Pavlova

The decisions of the government after the end of the elections fell like a cornucopia, so the "Action Plan for the Implementation of the Concept of Demographic Policy of the Russian Federation for the Period up to 2025" was agreed on the first working day. And although almost 9 months have passed since the beginning of 2021 and 1.5 years since the beginning of the commodity and covid crisis, the need for a clear plan of action is as high as ever. Russia is falling into a huge demographic hole right now. In the first half of 2021, according to Rosstat, only 678.1 thousand children were born in the whole country - 2.9 thousand less than in the first half of 2020. On average, 461.3 children were born per 100 thousand of the population - this is the worst indicator since 2001. Whatever the authorities say about the success of healthcare and victories over the covid (how long have you seen the last time strict control of at least elementary masks?), But actively people are only dying. The number of deaths over the same six months increased by 153.5 thousand people - up to 1.1 million people. Thus, in the first half of the year, the country lost 421.9 thousand people. It's like the population of Tver or Sochi died out. And at the end of the year, at such a rate, we can lose the number of people comparable in number to those living in Saratov. Last year was also not a gift: the natural population decline amounted to 688.7 thousand people - this is more than the population of Izhevsk or Barnaul, almost Togliatti...

Novye Izvestia spoke with the independent demographer Alexey Raksha about the current situation and the measures that the government is proposing.

- The coronavirus pandemic has already taken 700 thousand people from us. And he continues to take about 1.5-2 thousand a day. In Russia, absolute records were broken in winter in terms of the number of deaths every month, and in July, in many regions, records were broken in terms of the number of deaths in history. We have never had such a terrible summer. All the acceleration of population decline. Over the past 1.5 years - due to the coronavirus. Covid is the most important factor that affects demography right now, in the last 1.5 years in Russia, the expert notes.

But will the new plan be able to rectify the situation? There are doubts about this. The first section in this document , consisting of 42 events, is not at all measures to improve welfare, which would be logical, because, according to Rosstat, 48.3% of children in large families that support demography live below the poverty line. The first thing in the Plan are activities aimed at popularizing and promoting traditional family values and active longevity. Alas, you cannot pay off with traditional values alone in a store. The achieved indicators in this section are very abstract: at least 2.5 million people should use the Internet portal "I am a parent!", At least 5 million people should be annually covered by activities to promote family values. With an abundance of state employees, it is, of course, not difficult to complete the task. Anyway, draw up the required reporting. And the Plan can also open up a wide field for "cutting" the budget: by 2025, at least 70 NPOs should be included in programs and projects for the development of parenting competencies annually.

- For some reason, the first section in this document lists measures of propaganda and popularization of family values, but, firstly, so far it has been very light, weak, indistinct propaganda, and secondly, between the propaganda of family values (by the way, and what is it in general, specifically?) and the increase in the birth rate may not be connected - says Alexey Raksha.

Most of the events - 16 out of 42 - are dedicated to improving the well-being of families with children. But their effectiveness also raises some questions. Of course, there are support measures available to all families. These are, for example, payments of the same maternity capital, preferential mortgage. But in 2023, only 3 thousand families will be able to apply for special mortgage products against 57 thousand families in 2022. But in 2024, as many as 120 thousand families should give preferential terms. It is very similar to creating an artificial shortage and giving gifts to families with children before the presidential elections. For the parliamentary elections, pensioners and security officials were gifted, and the turn of families with children will come to the presidential elections.

Also, individual events are allocated for such ordinary moments as informing families about possible support measures through State services. Social support for low-income families through social contracts did not stand aside either. The rest of the measures are aimed at the implementation of the already existing rights of children: the availability of preschool education, services for the supervision and care of children of preschool age. That is, the state will provide families with the minimum means and opportunities necessary for survival. But nothing more. Even vocational training for women caring for a child under 3 years old is mentioned insofar as: to fulfill the plan, it is enough to train only 19 thousand mothers annually. But somehow a measure was added to the list to increase the demand for domestic goods for pregnant women and children, which can help not families, but businesses.

According to Alexey Raksha, the likelihood of success of this approach is extremely low:

- The fight against poverty has almost nothing to do with demography. There is a demographic policy, and there is a family, social policy. They have different tools and different goals. Benefits for children, which are given according to the criteria of targeting and need, do not affect the birth rate at all. In our country, we have not noticed any effect of monthly benefits on the birth rate. The birth rate is affected only by maternity capital and one-time large payments, which are aimed at housing and reducing the mortgage rate. That is, measures of an investment nature with an eye to the future. Anything related to consumption has almost no effect on fertility.

Measures to reduce maternal and infant mortality, improve reproductive health draw attention to the variability of indicators. Thus, the plan indicates that the goal of "reducing infant mortality to 4.5 cases per 1000 live births in 2024", if necessary, can be adjusted. And not a word about what is recognized as a necessity, and in which direction the indicators can be adjusted.

But the authorities, in the conditions of the raging covid, insured themselves: some measures to reduce mortality and increase life expectancy are not at all difficult to carry out. It all starts with the fact that the indicator of the availability of primary health care was made "population satisfaction" without any specific values. Satisfaction just has to grow somehow. Everything is based on polls with opaque counting of responses. No one is going to fight the consequences of optimization, which drastically reduced the availability of medicine. Not everything is going smoothly with the numerical indicators: for example, hospital mortality from myocardial infarction should be reduced to 8%, but no one is talking about out-of-hospital mortality. With these goals in mind, it’s safer for doctors to leave people to die at home so as not to disrupt the plan.

With the maintenance of the health of the older generation and health at work, the same vague story: the number of cases of providing assistance to the elderly at home should increase (one case increase is enough), there should be fewer occupational diseases, and more prevention at enterprises. How much more or less - the plan does not specify.

As Alexey Raksha notes, the main problem of this plan lies not in the events that are listed, but in the events that are not.

- The action plan for the national project "Demography" in terms of stimulating the birth rate has become much less detailed, and all indicators of birth rate have been removed there. Apparently, our authorities are not interested in fertility. Or such an approach prevailed that it was useless to do anything. This is wrong, or our government has ultraliberal ideologists who do not believe at all that it is possible to increase the birth rate. But they are ignorant, because they cannot calculate how much, for example, mother capital brought (2.5-3 million second and subsequent children). For mortality, I see more specific goals for causes of death, which leads to distortion of statistics for these reasons. But there is no general goal for mortality, there is no general goal for life expectancy. Setting specific goals for causes of death leads to a change in the practice of postmortem diagnosis in comorbid patients (with multiple pathologies). As a result, specialists cease to understand what is really happening and cannot make predictions. The action plan for the implementation of the concept of demographic policy is actually administratively lower than the May decrees. It should detail and concretize the means and tools for achieving goals, but I do not see any detailing and concretization of fertility goals, and I am very sad that our state does not actually set itself any goals to increase the fertility rate.

It turns out that it would be too naive to expect a positive result from this document. According to the demographer, to improve demographics, an increase in real disposable income is needed, competent managers who understand the specifics of fertility are needed, it is necessary to double the financing of health care, the policy of helping families - by 2-3 times, the mother capital for the third child should be increased to 1 , 5 million rubles and returned the maternity capital for the second child in 1 million rubles.

And the officials still believe that migrants can solve all the problems with the natural decline of the population. The conditions of entry will be softened, charter trains will be sent, and there is no problem. Either Russians begin to breed in poverty, or migrants from Central Asia will do their job. And you won't be full of propaganda and you won't feed your children with slogans.

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