News flash for wealthy authoritarian parasites around the world, because you all seem ignorant of this fact:
Declining birthrates are a direct result of the simple fact that more people all the time decide that they have no desire to bring children into this world, and that in turn is a direct result of the fact that you've turned this world into a warped, corrupt, toxic, authoritarian shithole.
I disagree. There's a lot of reasons why people don't have children, including:
emotional devastated youth (abandoned by parents, addicted to smartphones, misunderstood by society)
people can't find partners for this reason
too much stress from too much work
wages are barely keeping up with inflation, and I project they will in fact not keep up in the long term in the US due to missing labor protections and decreasing demand for labor.
rising cost of living because politically, nobody really cares about the population.
edit: sorry i realized i made these points US-specific but you were talking about russia, sorry.
They aren't necessarily US specific. Wages not keeping up with inflation and rising cost of living is a factor from South Korea to Japan to Singapore as well. Some countries muck it up themselves like China with their one child policy back in the day (even the Chinese fertility rate has dipped below 2.2, I think).
Well, it's only a very, very recent problem in Japan. They had stagnation for decades. Little to no change in wages, little to no change in prices. In 2011, I was making something like 33,000 USD per year there and living very comfortably with ample savings and what the Japanese considered to be a large apartment. It's a pretty affordable country, aside from travel. Or if you want to live in a fancy place in a desirable big city neighborhood.
(And yes, I have been to Japan since then and know that things have changed somewhat. It's still cheap compared to the US. Food is so cheap, it's amazing what you can get.)
The strongest correlating factor around whether a child born into the world will starve to death or not is whether the mother has a basic education. It outweighs even regional data.
In a developing country rates also go down with civilization as people learn how not to breed like bacteria. But once it's about choice, that starts to be a good list. I'd almost list safety as a common theme in them. And in Russia.. yeah.
No - actually I was talking worldwide. Russia's just a notable example.
And I would say that all of the things you listed are, directly or indirectly, consequences of the fact that wealthy authoritarian parasites have warped societies to their benefit regardless of the harm done to others, so are actually examples of exactly what I'm talking about.
One point I want to add: Throughout most of human history, it was economically beneficial to have lots of children. They were your retirement plan (and cheap labor).
In most developed countries, this is no longer the case. People who want children get one or two, just to scratch the itch, but that's not enough to sustain the population (without migration).
My wife and I both work over 40 hour weeks. We are pretty comfortable especially compared to our friends and family members and we are not even close to buying a house and don’t have time to raise a kid and still think it’s too expensive to do so.
And if the world were a just place instead of a twisted shithole designed to maximize the privilege of a relative few wealthy and empowered parasites, you could work fewer hours, make the same or even more money and afford a house.
But instead the system has been warped so that you have to work long hours for insufficient pay and still can't afford a decent life, and all so that a relative few executives, board nembers, bankers, investors and politicians can siphon off the bulk of the wealth you generate so that they can buy more houses and bigger yachts.