According to current reports from Rosstat, the population of Russia as of January 1, 2023 was approximately 146,400,000 people.[10] On December 10, 2023 was approximately 146,115,376 people.[11]Russia, the largest country in the world by area, had a population of 147.2 million according to the 2021 census,[1] or 144.7 million when excluding Crimea and Sevastopol,[a] up from 142.8 million in the 2010 census.[12] It is the most populous country in Europe, and the ninth-most populous country in the world, with a population density of 8.5 inhabitants per square kilometre (22 inhabitants/sq mi).[13] As of 2020, the overall life expectancy in Russia at birth was 71.54 years (66.49 years for males and 76.43 years for females).[2]
From 1992 to 2012, and again since 2016, Russia's death rate has exceeded its birth rate, which has been called a demographic crisis by analysts.[14] Subsequently, the nation has an ageing population, with the median age of the country being 40.3 years.[15] In 2009, Russia recorded annual population growth for the first time in fifteen years; during the mid-2010s, Russia had seen increased population growth due to declining death rates, increased birth rates and increased immigration.[16] However, since 2020, due to excess deaths from the COVID-19 pandemic, Russia's population has undergone its largest peacetime decline in recorded history.[17] In 2022, the total fertility rate across Russia was estimated to be 1.42 children born per woman,[4] which is below the replacement rate of 2.1 and about equal to the European average.[16]
Thousands of abandoned villages are scattered across Russia[23] due to failed Soviet policies.Total population of Russia 1950–2010
After having peaked at 148,689,000 in 1991, the population then decreased, falling to 142,737,196 by 2008.[24] Russia has become increasingly reliant on immigration to maintain its population; 2021 had the highest net immigration since 1994,[25] despite which there was a small overall decline from 146.1 million to 145.4 million in 2021, the largest decline in over a decade.[26]
The natural population had declined by 997,000 between October 2020 and September 2021 (the difference between the number of births and the number of deaths over a period).[27] The natural death rate in January 2020, 2021, and 2022 have each been nearly double the natural birth rate.[28]
Following the Russian invasion of Ukraine in 2022, the demographic crisis in the country has deepened,[29] as the country has reportedly suffered high military fatalities while facing renewed brain drain and human capital flight caused by Western mass-sanctions and boycotts.[30] Many commentators predict that the situation will be worse than during the 1990s.[31]
In March 2023, The Economist reported that "Over the past three years the country has lost around 2 million more people than it would ordinarily have done, as a result of war [in Ukraine], disease and exodus."[32]
The UN is projecting that the decline that started in 2021 will continue, and if current demographic conditions persist, Russia’s population would be 120 million in fifty years, a decline of about 17%.[33][32]
Fertility
Population age pyramid of Russia from 1946 to 2023
Between 1993 and 2008, there was a great decrease in the country's population from 148 to 143 million.[34] There was a huge 50% decrease in the number of births per year from 2.5 million in 1987 to 1.2 million since 1997, but the current 1.42 fertility rate is still higher than that of the 1990s.[34]
At the beginning of 2022, 320,400 babies were born between January and March, 16,600 fewer than January–March 2021. There were twice as many deaths as there were births, deaths were 584,700 people.[34] The birth rate was 8.9 new babies per 100,000 inhabitants, the lowest crude birth rate since the year 2000.[34]
Russia has one of the lowest fertility rates in the world with 1.42 children per woman in 2022, below 2.1 children per woman, which must be the number reached in order to maintain its population.[34] As a result of their low fertility for decades, the Russian population is one of the oldest in the world with an average of 40.3 years.[34]
In many of the following years, Russia had the highest total fertility rate in the world.[35] These elevated fertility rates did not lead to population growth due to high mortality rate, the casualties of the Russian Revolution, the two world wars and to a lesser extent the political killings.
All numbers for the Russian Federation in this section do not include the Ukrainian regions of Kherson, Zaporizhzhia, Donetsk and Luhansk, which Russia annexed in September 2022 and which are currently partly under Russian military control. The annexation is internationally recognized only by North Korea.
In 2006, in a bid to compensate for the country's demographic decline, the Russian government started simplifying immigration laws.[citation needed] New citizenship rules introduced in April 2014 allowing eligible citizens from former Soviet republics to obtain Russian citizenship, have gained strong interest among Russian-speaking residents of those countries (i.e. Russians, Germans, Belarusians and Ukrainians).[50][51]
There are an estimated four million undocumented immigrants from the ex-Soviet states in Russia.[52] In 2012, the Russian Federal Security Service's Border Service stated there had been an increase in undocumented migration from the Middle East and Southeast Asia (Note that these were Temporary Contract Migrants)[53] Under legal changes made in 2012, undocumented immigrants who are caught will be banned from reentering the country for 10 years.[54][55]
Temporary migrant workers in Russia consists of about 7 million people. Most of the temporary workers come from Central Asia (mostly from Uzbekistan, Tajikistan and Kyrgyzstan), the South Caucasus (mostly from Armenia and Azerbaijan), and East Asia (mostly from poor areas of China, from Vietnam and Laos). Most of them work in the construction, cleaning and in the household industries. They primarily live in cities such as Moscow, Sochi and Blagoveshchensk. The mayor of Moscow said that Moscow cannot do without worker migrants. New laws are in place that require worker migrants to be fluent in Russian, know Russian history and laws.
The 2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine has led to considerable emigration, with over 300,000 Russian citizens and residents are estimated to have left Russia by mid-March 2022, at least 500,000 by the end of August 2022,[57] and an additional 400,000 by early October. The total number of political refugees, economic migrants, and conscientious objectors[58][59][60][61][62] is thought to be more than 900,000. In addition to evading criminal prosecution for opposing the invasion, and fear of being conscripted after President Vladimir Putin's 21 September 2022 announcement of partial mobilization, those fleeing voiced reasons such as disagreement with the war, the uselessness and cruelty of the war, sympathy for Ukraine, disagreement with the political roots of the war with Ukraine, the rejection of killing, and an assessment that Russia is no longer the place for their family.[63]
Occupied and annexed regions
Russia has encouraged people in occupied or annexed regions to become Russian citizens, a procedure known as passportization. This includes the Donetsk, Kherson, Luhansk and Zaporizhzhia oblasts of Ukraine,[64] and South Ossetia and Abkhazia in Georgia.[65]
Russia's constitution guarantees free, universal health care for all Russian citizens, through a compulsory state health insurance program.[67] The Ministry of Health of the Russian Federation oversees the Russian public healthcare system, and the sector employs more than two million people. Federal regions also have their own departments of health that oversee local administration. A separate private health insurance plan is needed to access private healthcare in Russia.[68]
Russia spent 5.32% of its GDP on healthcare in 2018.[69] Its healthcare expenditure is notably lower than other developed nations.[70] Russia has one of the world's most female-biased sex ratios, with 0.859 males to every female,[15] due to its high male mortality rate.[71] In 2019, the overall life expectancy in Russia at birth was 73.2 years (68.2 years for males and 78.0 years for females),[72] and it had a very low infant mortality rate (5 per 1,000 live births).[73]
The principal causes of death in Russia are cardiovascular diseases.[74]Obesity is a prevalent health issue in Russia; 61.1% of Russian adults were overweight or obese in 2016.[75] However, Russia's historically high alcohol consumption rate is the biggest health issue in the country,[76][77] as it remains one of the world's highest, despite a stark decrease in the last decade.[78]Smoking is another health issue in the country.[79] The country's high suicide rate, although on the decline,[80] remains a significant social issue.[81]
Russia had one of the highest number of confirmed cases in the world. Analysis of excess deaths from official government demographic statistics, based on births and deaths and excluding migration, showed that Russia had its biggest ever annual population drop in peacetime, with the population declining by 997,000 between October 2020 and September 2021, which demographer Alexei Raksha interpreted as being primarily due to the COVID-19 pandemic.[27]
Russia is a multilingual nation; approximately 100–150 minority languages are spoken across the country.[98][99] According to the Russian Census of 2002, 142.6 million across the country spoke Russian, 5.3 million spoke Tatar, and 1.8 million spoke Ukrainian.[100] The constitution allows the country's individual republics the right to establish their own state languages in addition to Russian, as well as guarantee its citizens the right to preserve their native language and to create conditions for its study and development.[101] However, various experts have claimed Russia's linguistic diversity is rapidly declining.[102][103]
Russia is a secular state by constitution, and its largest religion is Christianity. It has the world's largest Orthodox population.[105][106] As of different sociological surveys on religious adherence, between 41% and over 80% of the total population of Russia adhere to the Russian Orthodox Church.[107][108][109] Other branches of Christianity present in Russia include Catholicism (approx. 1%), Baptists, Pentecostals, Lutherans and other Protestant churches (together totalling about 0.5% of the population) and Old Believers.[110][111] There is some presence of Judaism, Buddhism, and Hinduism; pagan beliefs are also present to some extent in remote areas, sometimes syncretized with one of the mainstream religions.
In 2017, a survey made by the Pew Research Center showed that 73% of Russians declared themselves as Christians—out of which 71% were Orthodox, 1% were Catholic, and 2% were Other Christians, while 15% were unaffiliated, 10% were Muslims, and 1% followed other religions.[112] According to various reports, the proportion of Atheists in Russia is between 16% and 48% of the population.[113]
Russia has compulsory education for a duration of 11 years, exclusively for children aged 7 to 17–18.[119] Its pre-school education system is highly developed and optional,[122] some four-fifths of children aged 3 to 6 attend day nurseries or kindergartens. Primary school is compulsory for 11 year-olds, starting from age 6 to 7, and leads to a basic general education certificate.[119] An additional two or three years of schooling are required for the secondary-level certificate, and some seven-eighths of Russians continue their education past this level. Admission to an institute of higher education is selective and highly competitive:[118] first-degree courses usually take five years.[123] The oldest and largest universities in Russia are Moscow State University and Saint Petersburg State University.[124] There are ten highly prestigious federal universities across the country. Russia was the world's fifth-leading destination for international students in 2019, hosting roughly 300,000.[125]
^This is the proportional makeup of those that declared an ethnicity. 11.6% did not declare an ethncity so these figures should be treated with caution.
^In fertility rates, 2.1 and above is a stable population and has been marked blue, 2 and below leads to an aging population and the result is that the population decreases.
^The Sreda Arena Atlas 2012 did not count the populations of two Muslim-majority federal subjects of Russia, namely Chechnya and Ingushetia, which together had a population of nearly 2 million, thus the proportion of Muslims may be slightly underestimated.[104]
^The category included Rodnovers accounting for 44%, Hinduists accounting for 0.1%; pagan religions and Siberian Tengrists and shamans account for the rest.[citation needed]
^Including Judaism (0.1%) and other unspecified religions.
^ abFoltynova, Kristyna (19 June 2020). "Migrants Welcome: Is Russia Trying To Solve Its Demographic Crisis By Attracting Foreigners?". Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty. Retrieved 9 July 2021. Russia has been trying to boost fertility rates and reduce death rates for several years now. Special programs for families have been implemented, anti-tobacco campaigns have been organized, and raising the legal age to buy alcohol was considered. However, perhaps the most successful strategy so far has been attracting migrants, whose arrival helps Russia to compensate population losses.
^Nuwer, Rachel (17 February 2014). "Why Russian Men Don't Live as Long". The New York Times. Retrieved 7 January 2022. Russia's life expectancy is exceptionally low compared with that in other developed countries. While American men have a 1-in-11 chance of dying before their 55th birthday, in Russia the odds are 1 in 4.
^Fedun, Stan (25 September 2013). "How Alcohol Conquered Russia". The Atlantic. Retrieved 30 December 2021. Today, according to the World Health Organization, one-in-five men in the Russian Federation die due to alcohol-related causes, compared with 6.2 percent of all men globally. In her 2000 article "First Steps: AA and Alcoholism in Russia," Patricia Critchlow estimated that some 20 million Russians are alcoholics in a nation of just 144 million.
^The Lancet (5 October 2019). "Russia's alcohol policy: a continuing success story". The Lancet. 394 (10205): 1205. doi:10.1016/S0140-6736(19)32265-2. PMID31591968. Russians are officially drinking less and, as a consequence, are living longer than ever before...Russians are still far from being teetotal: a pure ethanol per capita consumption of 11·7 L, reported in 2016, means consumption is still one of the highest worldwide, and efforts to reduce it further are required.
^"Russia – The Indo-European Group". Encyclopedia Britannica. Retrieved 18 July 2021. East Slavs—mainly Russians but including some Ukrainians and Belarusians—constitute more than four-fifths of the total population and are prevalent throughout the country.
^Lazarev, Vladimir; Pravikova, Ludmila. "The North Caucasus Bilingualism and Language Identity"(PDF). Pyatigorsk State Linguistic University: 1325. The North Caucasus, inhabited by more than 100 of autochthonous and allochthonous peoples, including Russians, is a unique locus for conducting a large-scale research in the area of bilingualism and multilingualism.((cite journal)): Cite journal requires |journal= (help)
^ ab"Russian". University of Toronto. Retrieved 9 July 2021. Russian is the most widespread of the Slavic languages and the largest native language in Europe. Of great political importance, it is one of the official languages of the United Nations – making it a natural area of study for those interested in geopolitics.
^Wakata, Koichi. "My Long Mission in Space". JAXA. Retrieved 18 July 2021. The official languages on the ISS are English and Russian, and when I was speaking with the Flight Control Room at JAXA's Tsukuba Space Center during ISS systems and payload operations, I was required to speak in either English or Russian.
^"Russia – Ethnic groups and languages". Encyclopedia Britannica. Retrieved 8 November 2020. Although ethnic Russians comprise more than four-fifths of the country's total population, Russia is a diverse, multiethnic society. More than 120 ethnic groups, many with their own national territories, speaking some 100 languages live within Russia's borders.
^"Russian Census of 2002". 4.3. Population by nationalities and knowledge of Russian; 4.4. Spreading of knowledge of languages (except Russian). Rosstat. Archived from the original on 19 July 2011. Retrieved 16 January 2008.
^"Chapter 3. The Federal Structure". Constitution of Russia. Retrieved 27 December 2007. 2. The Republics shall have the right to establish their own state languages. In the bodies of state authority and local self-government, state institutions of the Republics they shall be used together with the state language of the Russian Federation. 3. The Russian Federation shall guarantee to all of its peoples the right to preserve their native language and to create conditions for its study and development.
^There is no official census of religion in Russia, and estimates are based on surveys only. In August 2012, ARENA determined that about 46.8% of Russians are Christians (including Orthodox, Catholic, Protestant, and non-denominational), which is slightly less than an absolute 50%+ majority. However, later that year the Levada CenterArchived 31 December 2012 at the Wayback Machine determined that 76% of Russians are Christians, and in June 2013 the Public Opinion Foundation determined that 65% of Russians are Christians. These findings are in line with Pew's 2010 survey, which determined that 73.3% of Russians are Christians, with VTSIOMArchived 29 September 2020 at the Wayback Machine's 2010 survey (≈77% Christian), and with Ipsos MORIArchived 17 January 2013 at the Wayback Machine's 2011 survey (69%).
^Верю — не верю. "Ogonek", #34 (5243), 27 August 2012. Retrieved 24 September 2012.
^Zuckerman, P. (2005). "Atheism: Contemporary Rates and Patterns". In Martin, Michael (ed.). The Cambridge Companion to Atheism. Cambridge University Press.
^Jardine, Bradley (4 January 2017). "Russia's Buddhist Republic". The Diplomat. Retrieved 4 June 2021. Kalmykia is Europe's only Buddhist Republic. The region's people are descended from the nomads who wandered the vast Central Asian steppes under Genghis Khan's empire. When the empire began to collapse, the Kalmykians migrated toward the Caspian Sea settling what is today called Kalmykia – Kalmyk means "remnant" in the local language.
^"Lomonosov Moscow State University". QS World University Rankings. Retrieved 28 June 2021. ...Considered one the most prestigious universities in Russia, It houses the tallest educational building in the world, and hosts more than 47,000 students, welcoming 4,000 international students every year.
Gavrilova N.S., Gavrilov L.A. Aging Populations: Russia/Eastern Europe. In: P. Uhlenberg (Editor), International Handbook of the Demography of Aging, New York: Springer-Verlag, 2009, pp. 113–131.
Gavrilova N.S., Semyonova V.G., Dubrovina E., Evdokushkina G.N., Ivanova A.E., Gavrilov L.A. Russian Mortality Crisis and the Quality of Vital Statistics. Population Research and Policy Review, 2008, 27: 551–574.
Gavrilova, N.S., Gavrilov, L.A., Semyonova, V.G., Evdokushkina, G.N., Ivanova, A.E. 2005. Patterns of violent crime in Russia. In: Pridemore, W.A. (ed.). Ruling Russia: Law, Crime, and Justice in a Changing Society. Boulder, Colorado: Rowman & Littlefield Publ., Inc, 117–145
Gavrilova, N.S., Semyonova, V.G., Evdokushkina G.N., Gavrilov, L.A. The response of violent mortality to economic crisis in Russia. Population Research and Policy Review, 2000, 19: 397–419.
Kamenskii, Aleksander (2014). "Do we know the composition of the 18th century Russian society?". Cahier du MONDE RUSSE. 55 (1–2): 135–148. ISBN9782713224409. ISSN1777-5388.
147,182,123 (2021 census)[1]
146,115,376 (December, 2023)[1]
13.1 deaths/1,000 population (2022)
_on_01_January,_1927.png)
_-diff.png)
.png)
.png)
