Russia’s latest move to combat low birth rates? Paying students to have children – National
About a dozen regions in Russia are preparing to offer cash payments to young women who give birth, Russian outlets report, but there is a big catch.
According to the Moscow Times, financial incentives for childbirth will be offered in at least 11 Russian regions and will go into effect on Jan. 1, 2025. If a young woman succeeds in carrying the child to term, she will be paid 100,000 rubles, or thereabouts. C$1,300.
The bonuses, first announced in several states over the summer, are subject to strict conditions. Although it varies by state, all require expectant mothers to be full-time students at a local college or university. Additionally, they must be under 25 years of age at the time of application.
Eligibility is also waived if the mother fails to carry the child to term, meaning that a stillborn child will exclude the woman from receiving payment.
Last month, Russia’s lower parliament voted unanimously to ban what authorities say is dangerous propaganda for a childless lifestyle, hoping to boost the faltering birth rate, Reuters reported.
Official data released in September put Russia’s birth rate at its lowest in a quarter of a century and the death rate rising as Moscow’s war on Ukraine continues and wartime migration sees citizens move abroad. The Kremlin called the figures “catastrophic for the future of the nation.”
President Vladimir Putin said that families with three children must become the norm in Russia in order to secure the country’s future.
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The ban on child-free propaganda includes any content deemed to promote “non-traditional lifestyles” such as homosexuality or gender indifference, as well as dissident accounts of the conflict in Ukraine. Violators can face heavy fines.
“We are talking about protecting citizens, especially the younger generation, from information spread in the media space that has a negative impact on the formation of people’s personality,” said Vyacheslav Volodin, the chairman of the lower house and Putin’s main ally, in November. after the ban was announced.
“Everything must be done to ensure that new generations of our citizens grow up focused on traditional family values.”
In the past month, Russian lawmakers have made sweeping and dramatic changes to health policy, as well as offering new stimulus money, in an effort to address low birth rates.
The government has proposed that public funds be used to pay for newlyweds to stay in hotels, in the hope that they will become pregnant, and to encourage women to use their leave from work to have sex with the intention of getting pregnant.
The regional health minister, Yevgeny Shestopalov, said on Russian television in September that women should “participate in childbirth during breaks.”
Per Newsweek, he added: “Being too busy at work is not a valid reason but a meaningless excuse. You can give birth during the break, because life flies by fast.”
And last year, Newsweek also reports, a member of the underground house in Russia proposed that female prisoners be released to give birth, in the hope of increasing the nation’s birth rate, and that their sentences be commuted if they succeed in having a child.
The country’s health authorities also announced an increase in fertility screening, and some women in Moscow reported receiving unsolicited referrals to screening clinics.
Russia is not the only country with a low birth rate. According to a Statistics Canada report released in September, Canada’s fertility rate in 2023 was 1.26 children per woman, the lowest rate on record since the agency began collecting data.
A StatCan report published in January said Canada, like other countries, is riding “the offspring of a ‘rollercoaster epidemic'” with many families postponing childbearing.
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