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Demography challenges development

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Given existing trends, demographers say Russia’s population will shrink from the current level of 142 million to something between 125 million and 135 million by 2025, and could fall to as low as 100 million by 2050.

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According to the State Statistics Service, 12 million more Russians died than were born from 1992 to 2007, with the arrival of 5.5 million immigrants only partially compensating for the loss, the Moscow Times reports. This demographic decline has serious economic consequences — there will be as many as 8 million fewer people in the work force by 2015 and possibly 19 million less by 2025, according to study by a group of Russian demographers sponsored by the United Nations and released in late April. Demographers have calculated that, in Russia, the replacement fertility rate — the number of births per woman necessary to maintain the current population — is 2.15. In 2006, the fertility rate was 1.3 children for every woman. The number of babies born last year jumped to about 2 million — up 8.3 percent from the year before and a post-Soviet record. Still, the fertility rate rose only to 1.4 children per woman, journalist Nabi Abdullaev writes for the Moscow Times.