Why payments to pregnant schoolgirls is dividing Putin's pronatalists

Times

2 days ago

President Putin is determined to reverse Russia's 'disastrous' population slump but the country's latest counter measure may be the most controversial yet — cash payments for schoolgirl pregnancies.
Rules introduced in at least ten regions since March mean teenage mothers who are still at school will be given one-off payments of 100,000 roubles (£900) for their first birth. There is no minimum age requirement of the mother to receive the payments. The legal age of consent in Russia is 16.
Critics are outraged at the promotion of risky and socially challenging births, while defenders of the initiative claim it is genuine aid to vulnerable young mothers.
The measure is part of a package pushed forward under Putin, who is concerned by a new decline in the populace, which experts blame in part on his invasion of Ukraine.
In recent years, Russia has increased financial incentives for new mothers, banned 'child-free propaganda' and placed restrictions on abortion and divorce as it battles to avert a demographic crisis.
In tune with this pronatalist spirit, a popular reality show on Russian television recently changed its name from 'Pregnant at 16' to 'Mama at 16'.
The payments are granted before birth, in some regions as early as the 12th week of pregnancy, in others after 22 weeks.
The extension of payments to school-age mothers has angered some pro-Kremlin politicians and activists. 'When a child gives birth to another child it's not something to be encouraged; it's not a reason for pride or heroism,' Kseniya Goryachova, a Russian MP, told colleagues in parliament.
If girls were made to think 'it doesn't matter how old you are, give birth, we'll pay' then, 'This is not care. This is very harmful propaganda,' Goryachova added.
Experts warned the measure may simply be ineffective. John Ermisch, an emeritus professor of family demography at Oxford University, said that financial incentives to give birth usually did not have a long-term effect. 'You get a short spike, then a decline,' he told BBC News Russian.
But Andrei Klychkov, the governor of Orel, one of the regions taking part in the trial, defended the payments, saying they should be seen not as rewards but as 'social support' for teenage girls 'in a difficult real-life situation' after getting pregnant.
Political commentators say the Kremlin is pushing such policies because a falling population undermines Putin's muscular rhetoric about the country 'getting off its knees' and rising to meet its enemies.
'Putin understands that, in the world of tomorrow, Russia will be a territorial giant and population dwarf,' the analysts Ivan Krastev and Stephen Holmes concluded in a recent report.
Russia's population plummeted from 148.6 million in 1993 to 142.7 million in 2009 as mortality rose and fertility rates dipped. Poverty, alcoholism, poor diet and accidents took their toll in the post-Soviet collapse, while many young Russians were financially unable to support raising a family.
From 2009, the trend was bucked as relative prosperity increased with Russia's oil and gas boom, and by 2022 the population was back to 147 million. However, it has since fallen again, to an estimated 146.1 million this year.
Hundreds of thousands of soldiers dying in Ukraine, an exodus of young people opposed to the war — or not keen to fight in it — and cuts to inward migration are thought to have added to the latest drop in population.
Those factors seem to have offset the number of 'citizens' that Russia says it acquired when it annexed Crimea and parts of eastern Ukraine.
• Janice Turner: Pronatalism will bring votes but not babies
Meanwhile, birth rates are on the slide again. According to data released by Rosstat, the state statistics agency, 195,400 children were born in Russia during January and February 2025 — a 3 per cent drop compared to the same period in 2024. Last year, Russia recorded 1.2 million births, the lowest annual total since 1999.
Putin's spokesman, Dmitry Peskov, has called the situation 'disastrous' and such statistics have prompted unusual suggestions from Russian officials desperate to stop the rot.
In March, Yevgeny Rudenko, a councillor from the Liberal Democratic Party of Russia in Kaluga region, urged women to wear skimpy clothes in hot weather, and said that in the Seventies 'everyone wore mini-skirts, marriages were strong, and families were being created'.
'Because of modesty, women are getting married less often,' Rudenko added. 'Only gay men don't like women in mini-skirts.'
In September, Yevgeny Shestopalov, a regional health minister, urged Russians to have sex during the working day.
'Being very busy at work is not a valid reason, but a lame excuse,' he said. 'You can engage in procreation during breaks, because life flies by too quickly.'