Russia's Birth Rate Crisis Get's Emotional
Emotions and political trust drove 76% of Russians' decisions about having children during the 2022-2023 crisis period
The study "Periods of high uncertainty: How fertility intentions in Russia changed during 2022–2023" by Elena Vakulenko, Dmitriy Gorskiy, Valeria Kondrateva, and Ilya Trofimenko reveals that when uncertainty spikes, psychological factors override traditional economic calculations in family planning. For governments trying to reverse declining birth rates (Russia's TFR dropped from 1.78 in 2015 to 1.4 in 2023), building public trust matters
The research: Elena Vakulenko and her team surveyed 7,967 Russians of childbearing age last May, catching them mid-crisis. Their paper, "Periods of high uncertainty: How fertility intentions in Russia changed during 2022–2023," captures a society wrestling with whether to bring new life into chaos.
Here's what Russians told them: Six in ten stuck to their original plans. Three in ten put babies on hold or gave up entirely. But surprisingly, one in ten actually sped up their timeline, deciding if not now, when?
By the numbers:
7,967 Russians aged 18-44 surveyed via VCIOM-Online panel in May 2023
60.2% kept their original fertility plans unchanged
30.6% postponed or abandoned parenthood plans
14.8% postponed indefinitely
6.3% postponed for 1-2 years
9.5% decided against having children entirely
9.2% accelerated childbearing plans
76% of variance explained by subjective factors (emotions + political attitudes)
17.2 percentage points: Drop in postponement probability for government supporters
10.2 percentage points: Increase for those feeling fear
The methodology: Researchers used probit models and machine learning techniques (honest trees) to analyze survey data representative of Russia's population by gender, age, and residence. The survey captured changes in reproductive intentions over the previous 12 months, coinciding with the escalation of the Russia-Ukraine conflict.
What drives decisions:
Subjective factors (76% of explained variance):
Emotional state (32%): Anxiety, fear, happiness, peacefulness, life satisfaction
Political attitudes (28.3%): Support for country's direction, trust in maternity capital program
Subjective income assessment (13.9%): Perceived financial changes
Objective factors (24% of explained variance):
Individual characteristics (12.8%): Age, gender, education, location
Parenthood/marital status (7.8%): Existing children, relationship status
Housing conditions (3.3%): Ownership, quality, mortgage status
Health status (1.9%): Personal health, COVID-19 experience
Key findings:
Factors increasing postponement/avoidance:
Feeling fear in past week (+10.2 percentage points)
Increased anxiety over past year (+9.5 percentage points)
Being female (+6.3 percentage points)
Already having children (+11.1 percentage points)
Being in a relationship but unmarried (+7.2 percentage points)
Factors decreasing postponement/avoidance:
Supporting government's political direction (-17.2 percentage points)
Viewing maternity capital as meaningful (-9.2 percentage points)
Stable or improved income (-10.9 percentage points for stable, -7.3 for improved)
Life satisfaction (-4.2 percentage points)
Age over 31 (non-linear effect)
The gender split tells its own story. Women who felt happy or peaceful pushed forward with pregnancies. Men fixated on paychecks. Yet for both, core emotions like fear, anxiety, and faith in leadership dominated every calculation.
The researchers discovered something darker through their "honest trees" analysis. Emotions don't just add up; they multiply. Take someone following war news who distrusts the government and feels afraid. Their chance of avoiding parenthood triples. Life satisfaction offers only partial protection, like a small umbrella in a hurricane.
What 93% were watching: Nearly everyone monitored the Ukraine conflict. Two-thirds reported spiking anxiety. Four in ten watched their finances crumble. Russia's birth rate had already fallen from 1.78 children per woman in 2015 to 1.4 by 2023. The crisis threatened to accelerate that collapse.
The cash paradox: Here's the twist. Forty-five percent of Russians still valued their maternity capital payments. The government program, offering money for second children, maintained real support. But even meaningful financial help wasn't enough to overcome raw fear. Imagine holding a winning lottery ticket during an earthquake. The money's real, but are you thinking about spending it?
This aligns with what demographer Daniele Vignoli calls "Narratives of the Future," the stories we tell ourselves about tomorrow. During stability, those stories follow predictable economic scripts. During chaos, they become pure emotion.
The trust factor: Government supporters navigated the same objective crisis but experienced it differently. Their faith acted as psychological armor. While neighbors panicked, they proceeded with life plans.
The data exposes our planning illusions. Young Russians wanted 2.7 children on average but had only 1.6. The gap between desire and action widened with each wave of bad news. Fear ate the future, one postponed pregnancy at a time.
What Moscow learned: Traditional pro-birth policies remain essential. People need that financial security as a foundation. But when uncertainty reaches a tipping point, even valued benefits aren't enough. Cutting them would only deepen the crisis, adding financial stress to existential dread especially among the 45% ranked benefits first and foremost. When citizens question whether tomorrow will resemble today, maintaining support programs becomes more critical than ever, even if they can't fully counter the emotional storm.
The acceleration principle: The study's machine learning revealed how negative emotions compound. Income improvements meant nothing to those gripped by fear. Anxiety overrode every positive signal. Bad news echoed in the psyche, drowning out reasons for hope.
For women especially, happiness itself became contraception's opposite. Peaceful feelings predicted pregnancy more than any economic indicator. Men showed different patterns, clinging to financial markers, but even they couldn't escape emotion's gravitational pull.
Global implications: Russia offers a preview of fertility's emotional future. Climate anxiety, political instability, and economic volatility are going global. If emotions overwhelm even valued economic support, traditional demographic policies need both preservation and radical rethinking.
The researchers acknowledge limits. They captured one moment in one crisis. No baseline exists for "normal" times. Some personality types might naturally catastrophize or optimize. But 7,967 voices paint a clear picture: In uncertainty's grip, the heart decides what the womb will do.
Bottomline: Governments worldwide chase higher birth rates with checkbooks that citizens genuinely appreciate and depend on. Russia's experience shows that's necessary but not sufficient. Today's fertility crisis isn't just economic. It's existential. Money provides a crucial floor, but until states rebuild faith in the future itself, even valued support programs will struggle against the tide of fear.