There is an astonishing piece in the current edition of The Public Interest conerning population decline in Russia.

In the twelve years since the dissolution of the Soviet Union Russia's population has fallen by 5 million people - around 3% of the population. This is in spite of net immigration of around 5.5 million people over the same period. The reason for depopulation is simply that there are far fewer people in Russia busy being born than busy dying.

Any depopulation trend in Western Europe due to falling birth rates is laughable by comparison. Italy, which has the lowest birth rate in Europe, has 103 deaths for every 100 live births. Russia has 160.

This crash has coincided with the collapse of Communism. In 1987 there were 2.5 million births against 1.5 million deaths. In 1997 there were 1.4 million births and 2.3 million deaths - almost a mirror image.

So what lies behind these figures. The article looks at the problem from a number of angles.

Various arguments are put forward for the fall in birth rate - high rates of infertility (at least 13% in child-bearing age couples vs. 7% in Western Europe), abortion (120 for every 100 live births in 2002) and marriage breakdown (3 divorces for every 4 marriages in 2001), but none of these arguments are in themselves convincing. In any case, falling birth rates have been seen in many countries and do not present the real anomaly. It is the astonishing rise in the death rate which needs the most explanation.

Life expectancy has fallen by 5 years for Russian men since the 1960's and has seen a slight decline for women over the same period. In 2002 it stood at around 59 for men, lower than the average for the world's developing nations.

The increased risk of death has particularly affected those of working age. Nearly all of this increase can be traced back to an increase in cardiovascular disease, for which the death rate rose by 65% for men between 1965 and 2001, attaining a mortality rate eight times higher than in France.

Probable causes are increased alcohol intake (including a trand towards binge drinking), the increased stress brought on by the massive upheaval of Russia's transmission from Communism and the corresponding failure of the health system. The article doesn't mention how access to health services has changed since 1992 but I cannot help speculating that many have been (literally) left out in the cold. Other factors could be to blame (sedentary lifestyles, diet) but there doesn't seem to be much evidence of these changing much over the last 20 years.

This worrying trend is not limited to Russia, either. It has been observed in a number of other Eastern and Central European nations. Latvia and Estonia, for example, are expected by the UN to lose around 50% of their populations by 2050. Whatever the root causes of these trends, this remarkable "hollowing out" of Eastern Europe is likely to pose problems far greater than the concerns being expressed in Europe and North America regarding greying populations and pension shortfalls. We should look eastward and count ourselves lucky.