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Demography

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The Soviet Parallels of Fishtown's Middle-Aged White Male Mortality Crisis
•�November 5, 2015
•�2,800 Words •�55 Comments
The newly released paper by Anne Case and Angus Deaton showing that mortality rates amongst middle-aged White American males (MAWAM) increased from 1999-2013 has been generating a lot of discussion of late. This mortality increase was concentrated amongst MAWAMs with a high school degree or less ("Fishtown," to borrow from Charles Murray's archetype of a... Read More
Is Russia's Demographic Recovery at Risk of Reversal?
•�January 30, 2015
•�1,800 Words •�12 Comments
This year will mark yet another milestone in Russia's steady post-1990s demographic recovery, with the population minus Crimea hitting 144.0 million as of January 1, 2015 [XLS link], relative to 143.7 million in the same period last year. (Excluding Crimea is, needless to say, done not out of political considerations, but to retain the appropriate... Read More
The "Normalization" of Russia's Demographics
•�November 25, 2014
•�1,500 Words •�65 Comments
This is the first of my promised Last Three Posts on DR. It's been a bit more than a year since my last update on Russia's demographic turnaround, and believe it or not, the cause of this was more than just laziness and lack of time on my part. A different question started bugging me:... Read More
Health Inequalities: Why Do Latinos Live Longer Than Whites?
•�October 8, 2013
•�700 Words •�26 Comments
Is summarized below for each state (source) - and it shows some very interesting patterns. The average life expectancy of Asian-Americans (86.5 years) is 4 years higher than in Japan - the longest-lived big East Asian country. Taiwan and South Korea are at around 80; Hong Kong is at 83; Singapore is at 81. The... Read More
Map of Natural Population Growth in the Former USSR in 2012
•�August 9, 2013
•�12 Comments
H/t AP for this beauty. It is for 2012. [Click to enlarge]. It speaks for itself so comprehensively that I'm not sure it's worth commenting further on my part here. Let's leave that to the comments section.
Russia's Demographics Continue to Steadily Improve
•�August 6, 2013
•�500 Words •�14 Comments
Here it is, for those who read Russian. The May data also has emigration data, which is not included in the prelimary estimates - that is here. The main points to take away: Births fell 0.3% and deaths fell 0.5%; as a result, the overall natural decrease has fallen from -57,000 in 2012 to -53,000... Read More
From Russia to Russabia? Not Anytime Soon
•�July 8, 2013
•�600 Words •�8 Comments
Faced with the utter failure of their doom-laden projections for Russia's population future to describe reality - it's population is now not only growing in absolute terms, but even barring migration its number of births now virtually equals the number of deaths - the more guttural elements of the interwebs are now resorting to another... Read More
Demography and Leaping to Conclusions
•�April 30, 2013
•�800 Words •�11 Comments
But first, a note about those two articles published here this morning: As I hope many (if not all) of you guessed, it was a scheduling accident. In particular, as regards the piece "Russia’s Economy Is Now Europe’s Largest," this is what I expected to see once the World Bank released its PPP-adjusted GNI figures... Read More
The Russian Imperialist Genocide In Chechnya
•�April 20, 2013
•�300 Words •�42 Comments
Hard as it is to believe, but in the wake of the Boston Bombings, many Western commentators actively trying to find the roots of the Tsarnaev brothers' rage in Russia's "aggression" or even "genocide" of Chechnya. This is not to deny that Chechens did not have an exceptionally hard time of it in the 1990s.... Read More
A Demographic Zastoi In Russia?
•�April 8, 2013
•�600 Words •�3 Comments
Russia's life expectancy is said to have decreased to 69.70 years, from 69.83 years in 2011 (via Mark Adomanis via Alexei Kovalev via Paul Goble via Izvestia). The figure for 2011 had in its turn been previously lowered from 70.3 years. So what gives? Does this herald a "disturbing trend"? Is Russia entering a period... Read More
The Rapid and Mostly Unnoticed Decline of Abortion In Russia
•�February 8, 2013
•�500 Words •�34 Comments
One of the keystones of the "Dying Bear" meme is the factoid that abortions outnumber births in Russia. As Mark Steyn put it, "When it comes to the future, most Russian women are voting with their fetus." The only problem is that there is no causal relation between abortions and demographic health whatsoever - and... Read More
The Russian Cross Becomes A Hexagon
•�January 30, 2013
•�1,100 Words •�31 Comments
One of the standard memes about Russia's demographic trajectory was the "Russian Cross." While at the literal level it described the shape of the country's birth rate and death rate trajectories, a major reason why it entered the discourse was surely because it also evoked the foreboding of the grave. But this period now appears... Read More
Da Russophile's Predictions for 2013
•�January 5, 2013
•�1,500 Words •�33 Comments
I just remembered I'd made some in 2012. It's time to see how they went, plus make predictions for the coming year. Of course I failed to predict the biggest thing of them all: The hacking that made me throw in the towel on Sublime Oblivion (remember that?), but with the silver lining that I... Read More
Major Misconceptions About the Dima Yakovlev Law
•�December 30, 2012
•�2,700 Words •�23 Comments
1. For Russian orphans life is much more dangerous in Russia than in America. Let's agree to disregard the hidden subtext which implies that any country ought to give over its orphans to foreign nationals should it be ranked safer for children. Let's first examine if the claim that Russia is 39 times more dangerous... Read More
The Guardian On China and Russia
•�December 29, 2012
•�700 Words •�3 Comments
Keeping up with the Guardian's stream of textual diarrhea in its Russia coverage is a quixotic task, and one that I do not really have the stamina for (although Alex Mercouris does this remarkably effectively). Still, when it comes to certain issues I'm particularly interested in, such as demography, or China-Russians relations as in this... Read More
Triumphs of Kremlinology
•�September 30, 2012
•�200 Words •�40 Comments
In 2008, Commissar of Transitionology Michael McFaul and his lab assistant Kathryn Stoner-Weiss wrote: "The myth of Putinism is that Russians are safer, more secure, and generally living better than in the 1990s—and that Putin himself deserves the credit... In terms of public safety, health, corruption, and the security of property rights, Russians are actually... Read More
Russia's Demography Continues to Exceed Even *My* Most Optimistic Predictions
•�September 29, 2012
•�300 Words •�14 Comments
According to the latest data, in Jan-Aug 2012 there were 1,253,000 births (2011 - 1,171,000); 1,274,200 deaths (2011 - 1,299,800). Therefore, the rate of natural decrease plummeted from 128,800 in 2011 to just 21,200 this year. Bearing in mind that natural growth was about zero for the September-December period last year, this means that even... Read More
Mid-Year Demography Update
•�August 21, 2012
•�300 Words •�2 Comments
Currently writing an article on Pussy Riot, but in the meantime, data on the demographic situation as of mid-2011. Jan-Jul / 1000 people for entirery of 2011 thousands / 1000 people 2012 2011 increase 2012 2011
Will Russia Record Natural Population Growth This Year?
•�July 27, 2012
•�100 Words •�4 Comments
Is the question asked by Mark Adomanis in his recent post. If you linearly extrapolate dynamics for the first half of this year to the second (BR +7.5%; DR -1.9%), then yes, it will - as per the graph I've stolen from him below. Adomanis says that making such a prediction back in 2005 would... Read More
Was Russia In A Demographic Apocalypse In the First Place?
•�June 29, 2012
•�1,300 Words •�75 Comments
And just as the Guardianistas and K.F. & Co. bury their heads ever deeper in the sand, real world statistics show confirm my thesis from the beginning of this year that Russia's demographic crisis has for all intents and purposes come to an end. As of May there was a y-y increase of 17% (!)... Read More
Alex Dryden, A Hack's Hack
•�June 26, 2012
•�1,300 Words •�29 Comments
Just when I thought the paper of Luke "I Plagiarize Off The eXile" Harding and Miriam "Putin Stole My Dry Cleaning Ticket" Elder could get no more incompetent, vindictive, and mendacious in its Russia coverage, it did. I present: Putin calls in Darth Vader to tighten his grip on Russia's energy assets by Alex Dryden,... Read More
Russia's Demography Continues to Improve Rapidly In First 3 Months of 2012
•�May 5, 2012
•�900 Words •�34 Comments
In my previous demography post, I argued that for all intents and purposes, Russia's "demographic crisis" can be reasonably argued to have ended. Population growth is now consistently positive since 2009, and as of last year, the country's natural decrease was a mere 131,000. This is a massive improvement over the 500,000-1,000,000 annual natural decrease... Read More
A Meeting with A Demographer
•�April 19, 2012
•�200 Words •�18 Comments
Today I had the pleasure of meeting up with Nick Eberstadt, an analyst at the AEI who specializes in Korea and Russian demography. He was dropping by SF and we had drinks at the excellent Samovar Tea Lounge. As readers will know, we do obviously have many disagreements on Russia demography, with Eberstadt representing the... Read More
Russia's Mortality from Vices On the Decline
•�March 7, 2012
•�200 Words •�6 Comments
Sometimes a single picture is worth a thousand words. This is one. Though Russia remains a highly dangerous country by developed country standards, it has improved immeasurably in the past decade. Fewer Russians today die from alcohol poisonings, homicides, suicides, and even - despite a near doubling of car ownership rates - transport accidents that... Read More
Translation: Sergey Zhuravlev - the Reversal of the "Russian Cross"
•�February 23, 2012
•�2,900 Words •�1 Comment
Sergey Zhuravlev is a Russian economist who runs a wonky but eminently readable and very useful, interesting blog and writes for Expert (author profile), which I may add is an excellent publication. You have met him previously on my blog as the inventor of a clever - if, in my opinion, flawed - argument that... Read More
Russia's Demographic Crisis Has Ended
•�February 21, 2012
•�600 Words •�7 Comments
I will have a much longer and detailed post on this in the future, with new projections, but this breaking news (at least as far as it comes with dry demographic statistics) so I can't refrain from writing a preliminary post on the matter. For all intents and purposes, Russia's demographic crisis - the infamous... Read More
Russia Demographic Update VII
•�October 24, 2011
•�1,400 Words •�63 Comments
It is now increasingly evident that Russia's population has settled on a small but decidedly firm upwards growth trend. I have been vindicated. According to the latest data, in the first eight months of the year births fell by 1.4% (12.5/1000 to 12.3/1000) and deaths fell by 6.2% (from 14.6/1000 to 13.7/1000) relative to the... Read More
Time to Shove Off! and What Then?...
•�October 2, 2011
•�2,200 Words •�21 Comments
If I had a cent for every Russia story from the past week that featured the (conclusively debunked) "sixth wave of emigration" meme... And if wishes were fishes. Still, the coverage of Russian reactions to Putin's return does demonstrate the venality and general fecklessness of the Western MSM. As Adomanis correctly noted, it is "negative... Read More
The Russophobes Were Right... (About the Wrong Country)
•�September 17, 2011
•�700 Words •�87 Comments
After peaking in 2007 at the height of its oil boom, the Russian economy slid off the rails, with GDP collapsing by 25% from peak to trough. Attempts to stem the decline by arresting pessimistic economists failed. Its image as a tiger economy, heavily promoted by Kremlin ideologues, was revealed to be a sham. Though... Read More
Nikolai Starikov - How Russian Liberals Create Russophobe Myths
•�July 23, 2011
•�2,100 Words •�59 Comments
Do you remember the growing chorus of voices in the Western media speaking of a "growing wave" of emigration from Putin's Russia? Those 1.25 million liberal professionals who have fled that neo-Soviet abyss in the past few years? As it turns out, not only are these stories complete fabrications - in a previous post, I... Read More
Russia's Brain Drain Abates, Just As Western Media Starts Hyping It
•�June 25, 2011
•�1,500 Words •�43 Comments
Everything's going badly in Russia. Medvedev's reforms are failing. The economy isn't growing. It is moving from authoritarianism to totalitarianism (in stark contrast to civilized Western countries), and the motto "We cannot live like this any longer!" once again becomes an article of faith in the land - or well, at least among "the blogs... Read More
Russia Demographic Update VI
•�June 3, 2011
•�1,000 Words •�16 Comments
As we're now approaching mid-2011, I suppose its time to give my traditional update on Russia's demography. So here's the lay-down: 1. In February, I predicted a population decline of c. 50,000 in 2010 (after a 23,000 rise in 2009). This was due to the excess deaths of the Great Russian Heatwave of 2010, and... Read More
The Uncertain Future of Cheap Russian Booze
•�April 28, 2011
•�900 Words •�3 Comments
One thing that strikes you, as you wander the shops of any Russian city, is the sheer cheapness of booze and cigs. As little as 3 years ago, one could buy a pint-sized bottle of beer or a pack of cigarettes for just $1, while a 0.5l bottle of vodka cost as little as $3.... Read More
Russia's Population Is Now Growing
•�March 28, 2011
•�300 Words •�9 Comments
The preliminary results of the 2010 Census are out, showing that the population has fallen to 142.9 million. This compares to 145.2 million counted in the previous 2002 Census. Most headlines have emphasized the falling population aspect of "Putin's decade". But the more interesting stuff is in the derivatives. According to state statistics agency Rosstat,... Read More
Russia's Demographic Resilience V
•�February 3, 2011
•�200 Words •�24 Comments
In summary, the excess deaths from the once-in-10,000-years heatwave canceled out most of the increase in births, causing the rate of natural decrease to fall by only 7,400 relative to 2009. Adding in the 82,500 drop in net immigration for Jan-Nov 2009, and we can estimate that Russia's population will fall by about 50,000 this... Read More
Russia Updates: Luzhkov, Rearmament, GDP
•�October 2, 2010
•�1,000 Words •�13 Comments
As you may have noticed, posting has slowed down in the past few days, mostly thanks to a combination of (1) Kindle, (2) 中文 and (3) the natural periods of apathy that afflict most non-pro bloggers. I don't really see that changing until the end of the year... 1. Sayonara, Luzhkov. Props to Jesse Heath... Read More
The Kremlinologist Catechism
•�August 27, 2010
•�700 Words •�9 Comments
This is a reprint of my article for the Sep/Oct 2010 issue of Russian Life magazine. It is a condensed version of Rosstat and Levada are Russophobia’s Bane. Enjoy! There is a Catechism that dominates American discourse on Russia today. Just flip through The Washington Post’s editorials, peruse American political science journals or listen (cringe)... Read More
Russia Burning: Not Apocalypse, But Its Prelude
•�August 7, 2010
•�1,900 Words •�44 Comments
This post is a meta-commentary on media coverage of Russia's drought and wildfires. Now make no mistake, I admire the yeoman work of some journalists in covering Russia burning: no doubt a few will even make their way into the classical cannon such as The Saga of the Burned Foot (Miriam Elder) or The Tale... Read More
Top 5 Demography Myths
•�June 20, 2010
•�1,500 Words •�45 Comments
In this post, I intend to disprove or at least question five commonly encountered myths about world demography (as I already did for Russia). 1. The Third World is experiencing a fertility-driven population explosion. Whereas this was true a generation ago, today most countries outside sub-Saharan Africa are in the later throes of demographic transition... Read More
The Boris Bombshell. Two Years Later. Still a Dud.
•�June 18, 2010
•�4,400 Words •�12 Comments
During the past two years, Russian "dissident" liberals Boris Nemtsov and Vladimir Milov have produced a frankly maniacal quantity of so-called "Independent Expert Reports" (there are now seven of them) that purport to debunk the "persistent myths imposed by official [Kremlin] propaganda". The authors say that their latest exegesis, melodramatically entitled "Putin. The Results. 10... Read More
Crisis Demography in Eurasia
•�May 19, 2010
•�2,200 Words •�21 Comments
In a recent post, Mark Adomanis pointed out that the Russian economy has done significantly better than many other East European nations during the recent crisis and is now mounting a strong recovery. He also speculated on the effects of the crisis on the demography of badly-affected countries such as Romania, Bulgaria, and the Baltics,... Read More
In Which I Criticize Vladimir Putin
•�April 22, 2010
•�3,900 Words •�22 Comments
I've been accused of being a "Russophile cockroach", an "amoral Putin lackey", and overall bad guy. Guilty as charged! Yes, I do like Russia and don't have much good to say about the Western media's coverage of it. Yes, I don't give much of damn for the moralistic posturing that any vapid idiot Kremlinologist can... Read More
Paul Goble, Promethean Propagandist
•�March 25, 2010
•�3,100 Words •�21 Comments
Mark Adomanis, who recently burst into the Russia-watching blogosphere like a fluffy pink grenade, has a series on "Who is the world's worst Russia analyst"? (So far Stephen Blank and Leon Aron are in the running). Personally, I think that Ed Lucas would "win" hands down. However, since he's already been exposed and discredited on... Read More
Regathering of the Russian Lands
•�January 27, 2010
•�4,700 Words •�14 Comments
I have long noted Russia's resurgence back into the ranks of the leading Great Powers; I predicted that the global economic crisis will not have a long-term retarding impact on the Russian economy; and within the past year I have bought into Stratfor's idea that the defining narrative now in play in Eurasia is Russia's... Read More
10 Myths About Russia's Demography
•�December 7, 2009
•�3,800 Words •�36 Comments
This post tries to debunk some popular, but misguided, views on demographic trends in today's Russia. These consist of the perception that Russia is in a demographic "death spiral" that dooms it to national decline (Biden, Eberstadt, NIC, CIA, Stratfor, etc). Some extreme pessimists even predict that ethnic Russians - ravaged by AIDS, infertility and... Read More
Europe, the Black Continent
•�October 23, 2009
•�4,500 Words
I am going to start off by looking at Europe, defined as the region under the influence of Western Christianity and/or the European Union (not Russia or Turkey, which will be covered in a later Eurasia Report). Demographic problems: aging, low fertility and Eurabia? The unsustainability of the modern welfare state? Cultural decline & reaction... Read More
Review of “America Alone” by Mark Steyn
•�July 17, 2009
•�5,000 Words •�23 Comments
Steyn, Mark – America Alone: The End of the World as we Know It (2006) Category: Islam; Eurabia; humor; Rating: 3/5 Summary: The future belongs to Islam (M. Steyn) It crept up on the West silently. Even as post-historical white Europeans were busy puffing on their weed, hugging trees and chanting Kumbaya in a happy... Read More
Through the Looking Glass at Russia's Demography
•�June 13, 2009
•�1,000 Words •�10 Comments
This is a succinct summary of my views on Russian demography, written about 2 months ago. Through the Looking Glass at Russia's Demography By Anatoly Karlin In 1992, for the first time since the Great Patriotic War, deaths exceeded births, forming the so-called “Russian Cross”. Since then the population fell from 149mn to 142mn souls.... Read More
Russia's Demographic Resilience
•�May 22, 2009
•�1,800 Words •�18 Comments
In this post I look at the (surprisingly good) Russian demographic data for Jan-Mar 2009 and argue in more depth that the economic crisis is unlikely to have a very major negative impact on short-term fertility, or any but a very minor impact on long-term demographic trends. I make some falsifiable predictions, estimating a birth... Read More
Rite of Spring: Russia Fertility Trends
•�April 26, 2009
•�5,100 Words •�5 Comments
After its long pre-modern stint as Europe's most populated nation, France started transitioning to lower birth rates from the Napoleonic era, about a century in advance of the rest of Europe. On the eve of the First World War, its stagnant population made a stark contrast to German youth and virility. Considering the disparity in... Read More
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Anatoly Karlin
About Anatoly Karlin

I am a blogger, thinker, and businessman in the SF Bay Area. I’m originally from Russia, spent many years in Britain, and studied at U.C. Berkeley.

One of my tenets is that ideologies tend to suck. As such, I hesitate about attaching labels to myself. That said, if it’s really necessary, I suppose “liberal-conservative neoreactionary” would be close enough.

Though I consider myself part of the Orthodox Church, my philosophy and spiritual views are more influenced by digital physics, Gnosticism, and Russian cosmism than anything specifically Judeo-Christian.