By Staff

(AXcess News) Washington - Its not that Russian's aren't giving birth to children, its just that the number of births is exceeding the number of deaths for the first time in fifteen years.

Russia's Health Ministry is taking credit for increase in birth rate, citing the economic stimulus program approved by the Kremlin as the reason why more mothers in Russia are giving birth and fewer people are dying.

But you can't argue with the numbers.  On an annualized basis, Russia's birth rate is up between 7 and 8 percent.  In August alone, 1000 more people were born than died.

According to the UN, Russia's population has shrunk by 6.6 million people since 1993, and could lose up to 11 million more by 2025.

"What we are seeing today is a temporary fluctuation," said Igor Beloborodov, director of the Institute of Demographic Studies. "We can't define this as an improvement. The general situation in Russia and in Europe is really a demographic chasm."

Short-term financial measures aren't going to change that significantly, he said. "As society becomes more secularised, and as the family breaks apart, women keep having fewer children. Thirty per cent of babies are born out of wedlock, and up to 60 per cent of marriages fail."

The government has made raising the birthrate by at least 50 per cent a national priority, with Prime Minister Vladimir Putin and President Dmitry Medvedev drawing attention to the demographic crisis. Measures since 2006 include larger maternity packages with paid maternity leave for up to 18 months, and full salary compensation for four months. The so-called "maternity capital" gives women who have a second child $10,000 for housing or education.

These measures have certainly had an effect on the latest spike, but they won't solve the demographic chasm, said Sergei Zakharov, a demographics expert at the Higher School of Economics. "But we can't be certain whether this is actually a lasting trend, or that women are merely having the same number of children as planned, only sooner."

In other words, the current rise may be followed by a compensatory drop after about five years. Financial incentives, experts said, only encourage women to have their one or two children sooner. They do not help women to have larger families.

It is also nearly impossible to ascertain what exactly plays a role in increasing the birth rate, Zakharov said.

"The current policy overestimates financial instruments, and completely ignores more serious problems, like the conflict between work and family," Zakharov said. In Beloborodov's words, the only way to "solve" the crisis is to shift the priority towards reestablishing a traditional family structure and encouraging religion, which has been proven to increase the birth rate. "Just look at Saudi Arabia - polls show that women there consider it a necessity to have a lot of children," Beloborodov said.

Evidence that the economic crisis could have a negative effect on the birthrate is inconclusive.

"People's life cycles do not work like economic cycles," Zakharov said. Nor do women seem to be having more abortions as modern contraceptive methods become cheaper and more widespread in Russia. "Women are using contraceptives to delay pregnancies, and we are not seeing a rise in unwanted pregnancies." The abortion rate in Russia - one of the highest in the world - kept falling in 2008.

Doctors, meanwhile, did not give any evidence that the crisis was significantly affecting women's reproductive decisions.