The collapse of the Soviet Union has ushered in an era of transition in its successor states and former satellite countries. Demographic characteristics and trends represent an important element of the setting in which the societal changes are taking place. These changes have taken a variety of forms, but certain similarities are evident. In many of these countries, life expectancies have fallen, especially among males. Significant acceleration in the pace of fertility decline is nearly universal as well. In addition, international migration has increased sharply in many countries in the region.
The new demographic developments have occurred with different intensities in the various countries, altering their relative rankings in many instances. Anticipated future demographic developments differ widely among the countries under consideration. Increasingly top-heavy age structures and eventually declining populations are foreseeable in most of the countries, especially those to the North and West (see end of article for regional definitions by country).
This paper will profile trends in fertility, mortality, and migration in the recent past, drawing on the Census Bureau's International Database. We will explore future developments in population size and age-sex composition through comparative analysis of our recently completed round of world population projections.
TRENDS
Mortality
Male and female life expectancy at birth varies widely for the East European and former Soviet countries (Figure 1-see Appendix for list of countries in figures 1 and 2). According to the most recent figures, male life expectancy at birth ranges over the European countries from a low of 57.2 years in Russia (1994) to a high of 70.1 in Macedonia (1992). Romania and Slovenia register the lowest and highest female life expectancies, respectively.
Most of the East European and former Soviet countries have experienced rising adult mortality for at least some portion of the period since 1970. Increasing mortality from accidents and cardiovascular disease typically has driven the rise in adult mortality, primarily among males. The consensus among analysts attributes this trend to increases in alcohol consumption, unhealthy diets, and other "civilization diseases" as these are called in the East European literature. Hungary exemplifies this pattern in its purest form, with the decline in life expectancy confined to men while women exhibit a slight rise in life expectancy.
The most extreme example of declining peacetime life expectancy in the present analysis is Russia, where official male life expectancy at birth has fallen seven years lower than it was some 30 years ago. [Bosnia and Herzegovina's estimated male life expectancy dropped by 20 years in the 1990's alone, however, the obvious cause of this was the civil war.] In the Russian case, female life expectancy at birth also has fallen, although less sharply than male life expectancy. Over half the decline in male life expectancy at birth in Russia occurred from 1992 to 1994. In 1993 alone, male life expectancy at birth in Russia declined by 3 years. Declines of this scale over such a short time have seldom, if ever, occurred in peacetime.
Fertility
The countries included in this analysis are quite heterogenous in terms of fertility. All these countries have completed the "demographic transition" from high to low fertility common to all industrialized countries. This transition has been associated with a shift in norms from families with many children to families of two or fewer children.
The European countries in this analysis, except Albania and Moldova, have completed the transition as indicated by their Total Fertility Rates (TFRs) of around 2.0 or less (Figure 2). [The Total Fertility Rate (TFR) indicates the number of children a woman would have over the course of her reproductive life if it were spent subject to the regime of age-specific fertility rates prevailing in the given country at the give point in time.] Georgia appears to have recently graduated into this category. By contrast, the onset of sustained fertility decline did not appear in the indigenous Central Asian population until the mid-1970s. The TFRs of the three Central Asian countries whose indigenous nationalities comprise predominant shares of the population (Uzbekistan, Turkmenistan, Tajikistan) imply families in which children outnumber parents. The lower fertility levels of Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan reflect the presence of sizeable contingents of Russians and other European nationalities in their respective populations. Finally, the populations of Albania, Armenia, Azerbaijan and Moldova fall into an intermediate group between the Central Asian and European fertility ranges.
In most of the European countries we are studying, fertility had fallen by 1980 below the level necessary to ensure replacement of the population in the long-run, which is conventionally taken to correspond to a total fertility rate of 2.1. Uneasy with the prospect of eventual population decline, the governments in many of these countries adopted a variety of measures to stimulate fertility. The most extreme of these policies was Romania's ban on abortions and contraception, which involved compulsory medical screening of women to police against all detectable forms of birth control. The governments of the other East European countries were not prepared to go this far, and introduced a variety of financial and material incentives to stimulate childbearing. In most instances, a temporary rise in fertility followed the introduction of these measures. Romania appears to be the only clear example of a sustained increase in fertility above replacement for an extended length of time.
Recently, the pace of fertility decline has accelerated in a number of countries, most notably Russia. In 1988, Russia's TFR of 2.2 was approximately at the replacement level, having risen for 7 years since the Communist Party adopted a comprehensive maternity benefit program in 1981. Since 1987, Russia's TFR has declined, accelerating sharply after the breakup of the Soviet Union. Russia's 1994 TFR of 1.4 ranks among the lowest in Europe. These pronounced fluctuations in annual TFRs may reflect changes in spacing of births among couples in the childbearing ages rather than actual shifts in family size goals, as both the Russian and Western literatures suggest; therefore, we may anticipate another reversal in Russia's annual TFR trend.
Migration
The social and political changes occurring in the former Soviet bloc have given impetus to migration across the borders of the various countries. One case in point pertains to the neighboring states of Czech Republic and Slovakia, which previously comprised Czechoslovakia. After the formal dissolution of Czechoslovakia in 1993, a sudden surge in net migration from Slovakia to the Czech Republic occurred, but lasted only one year. Refugees fleeing the fighting in the former Yugoslav republics of Bosnia, Croatia, Serbia and Slovenia represent another example of recent politically-induced international migration.
ASSUMPTIONS
Population Projection Scenarios
We will explore the future impacts of past and present trends in fertility, mortality and international migration discussed above on future population size and composition in the countries in question by drawing on the International Database maintained by the International Programs Center of the Bureau of the Census. The International Programs Center conducts a biennial series of population projections for all countries in the world. Fresh results from the most recent 1995 series will be presented below. A brief summary of the principal assumptions of the projections is now in order.
In developing our projection assumptions we have distinguished four regional groups of countries that correspond to different stages of demographic development: 1) countries of Eastern Europe outside the former USSR; 2) the European republics of the former USSR; 3) the former Soviet republics of the Caucasus (Georgia, Armenia, Azerbaijan); and 4) the former Soviet republics of Central Asia. In general, we have separated assumptions about changes in the immediate future from assumptions about long-run tendencies.
Fertility Assumptions
For the East European countries and the European former Soviet republics in the short-run, we have assumed that the recent sharp declines in fertility are due at least in part to decisions to postpone intended births; we assumed that fertility will recover by the year 2000 to the levels that prevailed around 1990 in the respective countries. After 2000, we have assumed that TFRs will decline gradually on a logistic trajectory to an asymptote of 1.5 for East European countries and 1.7 for the European former Soviet republics.
For the Central Asian republics of Kyrgyzstan, Uzbekistan, Turkmenistan and Tajikistan, we have assumed that fertility will decline through 1995 at the accelerated rates of the recent past, after which the pace of decline will slacken. From 2000 onwards, we assumed that the TFRs declined on logistic trajectories to an asymptote of 2.0. We have assigned Kazakhstan, whose population includes sizeable contingents of Russians and other European nationalities, a long-run asymptote of 1.8. We have otherwise treated it similarly to the other four Central Asian republics.
Of the Caucasus republics, we treated Georgia and Armenia like the European former Soviet republics, while we handled Azerbaijan similar to Kazakhstan.
Mortality Assumptions
Our mortality assumptions are more uniform than our fertility assumptions, because there is less variation in mortality levels among the countries under analysis than was the case with respect to fertility. In general, we assumed that the mortality declines continued through 1995, after which mortality recovers to around its 1990 levels. Over the long-run, we projected the mortality levels of all countries in Europe to evolve gradually to a long-run limit mortality schedule associated with life expectancies at birth of 80 years for men and 86 years for women. We assumed that the former Soviet republics attain these targets in the year 2075, while the East European countries outside the former USSR reach the target mortality schedule in 2060.
International Migration Assumptions
Our treatment of international migration has some parallels with our fertility and mortality assumptions. In general, we have projected recent trends to continue through 1995, and then to diminish by 2000. After 2000, we assumed that international migration would decline to zero by the year 2025, on the notion that by this time the "push" and "pull" factors impelling migration will have been eliminated or the niches for immigrants in the destination countries filled.
PROJECTED POPULATION DYNAMICS
Population Size
Population projections for most countries show that the total population rises in the short-term. In addition, the population fluctuates in a number of countries--this is a characteristic of near-replacement fertility. Eventually, however, most of the populations of the countries eventually decline. This is true of all the Eastern Europe countries (except Albania) and all the European countries of the former Soviet Union (except Moldova).
Except for Kazakhstan, we see explosive growth in Central Asia, doubling over the projection period. In the case of Uzbekistan, we project the population in 2050 to exceed Ukraine's current population (Figure 3). All of Central Asia ends up being as big as non-Soviet Eastern Europe by the end of the projection period.
In general, Russia fits the "most countries description", i.e., the total population increases until 2013, but then begins to decline through 2050. Though Russia's population eventually declines, it remains very large--more than 150% larger than any other country among those we are studying here.
Age Structure
The low growth countries identified above all have similar age pyramid shapes at the beginning of the projection period. In all cases, the younger ages (those under age 40) account for a higher percentage of the population than the older ages. By the end of the projection period, however, the older ages account for a notably larger share of the population than the younger. Bulgaria appears to be the most top heavy. Ukraine, Poland, and Russia end up with a clearly top-heavy age structure that is not as extreme as Bulgaria's, but have a similar general shape.
Among the high growth countries of Central Asia, Uzbekistan is a classic example of a child dependency burden: the young age groups are much bigger than the adult age groups. Among other things, this implies a burden on the educational system. One has to make a large share of the 25 year old population schoolteachers just to keep literacy from falling. By 2050, the situation does improve somewhat.
Albania and Azerbaijan are two intermediate cases of population growth. In both cases, the age pyramid for 1995 is in the shape of a typical higher growth country (i.e., very bottom heavy). By 2050, however, we begin to see a shape more similar to the other European countries. The age structure is roughly rectangular, with no age group much different in size from another.
Demography is an integral component of the setting in which economic and social change will occur in the former Soviet Union and Eastern Europe. The trends and projections we discussed above provide several insights into future human resources and their welfare needs.
The first conclusion that can be drawn from the projections is that for most of the countries analyzed, population growth will continue (or resume after a brief period of decline) in the short-run, although fertility is often below the replacement rate. In the long-run, however, the effect of below-replacement fertility on age structure may have serious consequences. In the countries with social security systems, aging implies an increase in the ratio of beneficiaries to the working population. The greater the share in the number of dependents in the population, the greater the required rises in labor productivity necessary to avert a deterioration in the standard of living. Unless fertility rises substantially, most of the countries of Eastern Europe and the European part of the former Soviet Union can expect to confront this long-run scenario after they emerge from the radical shocks of the economic present and near future.
An entirely different set of demographic problems and prospects characterizes the populations of Central Asia and, to a lesser extent, Albania and Azerbaijan. These countries all will have high population growth that entails major demands on limited local resources. In these countries, the need to feed, clothe, and house a rapidly growing population drains resources that could otherwise be used for industrial development, environmental protection, or other requirements. Unfortunately, further massive population increases appear inevitable, particularly in the Central Asian countries, where we project a doubling of the population in the next 50 years, despite assumed reductions in fertility. However, the beneficial effect of a shift in age composition associated with declining fertility may help cushion the impact of population growth in these regions somewhat.
Non-Soviet Eastern Europe:
Poland, Czech Republic, Slovakia, Hungary, Romania, Bulgaria, Albania, Macedonia, Serbia, Montenegro, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Croatia, Slovenia.
Former Soviet Union:
Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Belarus, Ukraine, Moldova, Russia, Georgia, Armenia, Azerbaijan, Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, Turkmenistan, Tajikistan, Kyrgyzstan.
Non-Russia European FSU:
Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Belarus, Ukraine, Moldova
Baltics:
Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania
Caucasus:
Georgia, Armenia, Azerbaijan
Central Asia:
Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, Turkmenistan, Tajikistan, Kyrgyzstan.