Russians Marry Later Now Than In Past And All Signs Are They Will Marry Even Later In Future Regardless Of What Moscow Does – OpEd

Russians are now marrying approximately four years later than they did a little over a century ago, following with a certain lag the same pattern in most other countries and one that experts say shows that this trend will continue well into the future, the To Be Precise portal says. 

Vladimir Putin would like to reverse this trend in order to boost the birthrate, but he has not been able to slow let alone reverse this trend and he is also up against a fact of life that he doesn’t appear to take into consideration. Even those who marry earlier now have fewer children than their coevals earlier (tochno.st/materials/v-kakom-vozraste-rossiiane-zakliucaiut-brak).

In 1897, Russian men entered into their first marriage at 24.2 years and Russian women at 21.4, the portal says. “By 2021, the age of marriage rose by 3.7 years in the case of both men and women. In Soviet times, most Russians followed the following pattern: complete school, get a job and then start a family. All those things are happening later now.

According to To Be Precise, Putin has been making yet another mistake in his demographic calculations. He routinely talks about the need for Russians to follow the traditions of the peoples of the North Caucasus which he believes include early marriages and thus larger families.

But in fact, the portal says, “four of the six republics of the North Caucasus are among the ten regions where people get married latest of all. These are Ingushetia, North Ossetia, Kabardino-Balkaria and Karachayevo-Cherkesiya. Moscow and St. Petersburg are also in this list of ten.

One reason that the North Caucasus republics report older marriages is a statistical artifact. Rosstat doesn’t distinguish between registered and unregistered marriages, the portal says. But another reason is that marriages there are arranged by families and cost a lot, both of which delay marriages but don’t by themselves reduce fertility rates.

The To Be Precise portal highlights something else that many do not yet factor in to their thinking. Since the end of imperial times, “the difference” in age at first marriage “between cities and villages has almost completely disappeared.” So suggestions that ruralizing Russians would lead to earlier marriages and higher birthrates are almost certainly without foundation.

The most important conclusion the portal offers is that “marriage, the birth of children and sex are ever less connected with one another.” A major reason is that having children outside of marriage is less stigmatized in the past but having children within an early marriage is a quick path to poverty.

In Russia as in other industrialized countries, “later marriage is the widespread choice of today’s generations,” something that reflects the requirements of modern economies for investment in human capital – “and consequently, a longer period of education and a later transition to adulthood.”

“The processes can be reversed only briefly and at the cost of putting enormous pressure on society, according to the demographers with whom To Be Precise spoke. And states that engage in such practices are likely to find that their efforts will fail to achieve the outcomes they seek.