Population and the Birthrate

D. Valentei, Questions of Theory: Population Problems and Demographic Policy. June 19, 1981

The demographer Valentei treated late-1970s population trends as a problem of “long-range planning” that required active, state-directed demographic policy. It revealed official anxiety about sub-replacement fertility and the spread of one-child families across much of the European USSR. Valentei also pointed to looming population aging, stubbornly low life expectancy (especially for men), and “irrational” migration patterns that complicated labor planning and weakened regions such as the Non-Black-Earth Zone. In doing so, he framed demographic behavior not as private choice but as a matter of state capacity and economic development.

Original Source: Pravda, 19 June 1981.

Consideration of the specific features of demographic processes is mandatory for long-range social and economic planning. And the longer the period for which planning is undertaken, the better substantiated demographic policy- i.e., using a system of economic, social and legal measures and other ways of purposefully influencing the population's attitudes and its cultural and psychological standards to manage demographic processes must be.

In other words, the developed socialist society requires that planned influence be applied to demographic phenomena. The exacerbation of the demographic situation makes this requirement a necessity.

The principal unit, the source of all demographic events, and hence the chief object of demographic policy, is the family. The attitude of married couples toward the problem of the birthrate determines its level in the country as a whole, and the moral climate in the family and the number of children it has largely determine success in the upbringing of the rising generation. The attitude toward health as a highly important social value, the ability to intelligently combine work and leisure, and young people's attitude toward migration are also formed "at home." ...

Socialism's historic gains and the aforementioned trends in the social, economic and cultural process have brought about a change in women's position in society. Their legal equality has gradually been supplemented by social equality' economic independence from their husbands and, to all intents and purposes, equality of educational and cultural level. The role of children in the family has also changed, they no longer become workers at an early age, as they once did, and they are increasingly coming to have only a social, moral and psychological value for their parents. All this has brought about a mass shift of the Soviet family toward fewer children.

At present, the small family is prevalent among approximately 80% of the country's population. This includes practically the entire populations of the Russian Republic, the Ukraine, Latvia, Estonia, Lithuania, Belorussia and Georgia. In some regions of these republics, and especially in the larger cities, the two-child or even one-child family predominates ...

But the shift toward population reproduction below replacement level (when succeeding generations are smaller than the preceding ones) may gradually lead to many negative consequences. These include a sharp increase in the rate of the population's aging, with all the complex social problems that this entails, future difficulties in developing new territories, and many others. The prevalence of the one-child family is also complicating the cultivation of a spirit of collectivism and comradeship in children and making marriages less stable. In short, the interests both of the family itself and of society are suffering.

In this connection, the existing situation in a number of rural areas of the Russian Republic, especially in the Non-Black-Earth Zone, is cause for special concern. A low birthrate, in combination with a high rate of rural-to-urban migration among young people, has led to a deformation of the age-group structure there: The older age groups predominate in precisely those areas where manpower in the active age groups is very much needed.

One cannot fall to mention some of the negative phenomena that are encountered in other demographic processes. In particular, the population's life expectancy has changed very little in recent years. The gap between the life expectancy of men and that of women is not being lessened, which indicates that the work of public health agencies, the disease-prevention system and the struggle against job-related injuries and household accidents have not been sufficiently effective.

The exacerbation of the demographic situation is also manifest in the low rate of permanent settlement for new settlers in a number of regions of the country and ill population migrations that arc irrational from the standpoint of society's interests. The CPSU Central Committee's Report to the 26th Party Congress noted that people still prefer to move from north to south and from east to west, although movement in the opposite directions is preferable from the standpoint of the development of productive forces.

All these and certain other phenomena have increased the urgency of the scientific elaboration and implementation of an effective long-range demographic policy ...

Obviously, we should first of all reappraise women's social possibilities and obligations ... Developing and implementing a set of measures for creating the optimal combination of these two functions, reproductive and childbearing, on the one hand, and vocational and social, on the other, in each family appears to be the main way for a developed socialist society to exercise a directed influence on demographic phenomena.

We must put special emphasis on the role of enterprises and organizations in implementing measures for helping families and children and protecting mother and child; this should be a mandatory element of their social development plans.

It's also necessary to set "psychological mechanisms" in motion. The press, movies, television and radio should devote more attention to problems of the family and to Its lasting value. The point that the roles of father and mother are no less important to society than a married couple's work in production must be presented more clearly ...

Source: Current Digest of the Soviet Press, Vol. XXXIII (25 July 22, 1981), p. 12.