‘If Current Birth Rate Preserves, There Will Be Three Million Belarusians By The End Of This Century’

The economist explained what is wrong with Belarusian demography.

The population of Belarus continues to steadily decline. At the time of the collapse of the USSR, 10.2 million people lived in Belarus. Today, even according to official statistics, there are 9.2 million, and taking into account those who left, even less. And this figure will only decrease.

The ongoing repressions, the expulsion of people from the country, and economic uncertainty do little to encourage Belarusians to have children. And the authorities' calls are falling on deaf ears.

Academic director of BEROC Leu Lvouski cited depressing statistics on demography, writes «Solidarity».

“It is better to look at demography over long distances,” the economist notes. “So, by the end of the century, if we suddenly restore the birth rate to the maximum of 2017, we will have about 6 million Belarusians. If we have the current birth rate, then we will be talking about 3.5-3 million.

According to Leu Lvouski, the acting authorities are unlikely to be able to stop this decline.

“Now Aliaksandr Lukashenka thinks that since the Belarusians have left, he will deceive the Azerbaijanis, do some advertising somewhere, and they will come. But the Azerbaijanis are no stupider than the Belarusians. They will watch the news and not go anywhere,” the economist is sure.

The main reason why Belarus is experiencing a negative birth rate situation today is the lack of stability.

“Aliaksandr Lukashenka talks about it all the time, but stability exists in democracies, while autocracies have problems with stability, because everything is constantly changing,” Leu Lvouski explains. “Today they tell you, “Give birth, we’ll give you 10,000,” and tomorrow they tell you, “Give birth to this child for us and he will go straight to war,” and the day after tomorrow they tell you, “Give birth, but if the child goes to university, he’ll be ours and have to work for 5 years.”

But if the population of Belarus is declining so sharply, then maybe we shouldn’t resist the government’s calls?

“If we’re talking about allocating enough funds, resources, thinking and changing the policy all the time, yes, we should,” the economist believes. “But if we run around and say that a woman’s place is not in an IT company, but in a maternity ward, and ban abortions, we shouldn’t do that. There were such experiments. For example, comrade Ceausescu was also very concerned about demography and introduced super-strict bans on abortions. So much so that even if you knew that your friend was having an abortion, you were obliged to report it, otherwise you’d also go to prison.

This step really increased the birth rate in the country and increased the population. But the quality of this population has greatly decreased.

“Because worse than a child absent from the country is a child born to parents who do not need him,” Lev Lvovsky believes. “This means that parents do not invest in the development of the child, in human capital. After Ceausescu, the country saw a decrease in the average IQ for another 20 years. Yes, he increased the population, but he created — it may not sound politically correct, but in economics they say this — a low-quality population.

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