Where do the Children Come From? Using Policy to Raise the Birth-rate in Ukraine
Author: Maxim Boroda
Publisher: International Centre for Policy Studies, Kyiv, Ukraine
13-A Pymonenka Str.
04050 Kyiv Ukraine
Tel: +380 44 484 4400
Fax: +380 44 484 4402
http://www.icps.kiev.ua
ICPS Policy Studies No. 1, 2010
(in English and Ukrainian)
It’s hard to find a Ukrainian who has not heard about this problem, a journalist who has not written about it, or a politician who has not tried to do something about it – Ukraine’s low birth-rate and the continuing decline of its population
numbers. Lately, only the economic crisis and pervasive corruption can compete with this issue for the amount of space devoted in the press. We all know that at one time we were “52 million” and that we need to “make love or the country won’t have enough astronauts.”
Indeed, the demographic crisis in Ukraine is no less serious than the difficult economic one. The question of how to improve the demographic situation has remained an urgent issue since Soviet times. The platforms of all leading political parties contain nearly identical planks regarding the necessity to improve the situation by increasing the birth-rate. Politicians from different camps compete with one another by promising ever-larger childbirth benefits from the state.
This kind of simplistic approach to what is possibly the most complicated social phenomenon, demographic processes, is striking, at the least. In a way, our politicians bring to mind medieval doctors who, without burdening themselves with accurate diagnoses of diseases, immediately launched into bloodletting. Of course, for most people, this brought temporary relief, some felt no easing at all, and others were done more harm than good. In order to cure a disease, surgical intrusion is not necessarily the solution. What is necessary, though, is to establish all the symptoms, make the correct diagnosis, and select the best combination of medicines and therapeutic procedures for treatment. Why do we continue to reach for the lancet, when developed countries have long limited themselves to pills?
Ukraine’s low birth-rate and the consequent shrinking and graying of its population are only one of the symptoms of the demographic illness that Ukraine and all of Europe are suffering from. Yet most of the efforts of both our politicians and those in other countries are directed only at it. The reason is simple: other demographic challenges, such as high mortality and uncontrolled migration, are less responsive to political intervention and tend to thus remain outside the focus of most politicians. Instead, raising the birth-rate offers an opportunity to relatively swiftly and easily produces visible results. And that offers easy political dividends.
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