MODERN FERTILITY TRENDS IN RUSSIA AND THE IMPACT OF THE PRO-NATALIST POLICIES
In the 1990s Russia, along with many Eastern European countries, hit lowest-low fertility levels (TFR lower than 1.3 children per woman) which were persistent throughout the early 2000s despite some small growth of TFR. This spurred the introduction of pro-natalist policies, the most prominent of which was a large lump-sum payment on the birth of a second or a higher-order child, the "maternity capital", in 2007. This had an immediate impact upon fertility. In order to assess the impact of pro-natalist policies upon the TFR dynamics let us calculate an estimate what the TFR in 2015 would be if there were no such policies. The annual increase of TFR for second and higher-order births in 2000-2004 was about 0.02. If this increase had persisted in 2007-2015, the TFR for second and higher-order births in 2015 would have equalled 0.731, while in reality it was 0.990, or 35.4% higher. The TFR for all births would have been in this case 1.518, while in reality it was 1.777, or 17.1% higher. We can take these figures as estimates of the effect of the pro-natalist policies realized in 2007-2015. Notably, the increase is observed not only in TFR, but in fertility rates of real cohorts of women as well.