Translated material
THE CONDITION OF CHILDREN AND THE QUALITY OF THE HUMAN POTENTIAL IN RUSSIA
By Natalya Rimashevskay Academician, Russian Academy of Sciences
With the development of the information society, the importance of the population as the bearer of intellectual potential is growing by multiples in post-industrial countries. The nation’s intellect becomes the real engine and determining factor of progress. Globalization, enveloping the whole planet, shows that there is no substitution for intellectual potential as the distinctive resource of a society. The potential “flows” from one continent to another, from one country to another, and grows overall very sparely.
The demographic processes, based on the laws of population development, are distinguished by inertia in the turnover of generations, and these processes are little susceptible to outside influence. It is not surprising that the crisis condition of our society is forming a young generation with many problems and these young people, essentially the country’s future, will in turn complicate the socio-economic situation in Russia.
It is well known that at the start of the 1990’s the population was declining and there was a trend of depopulation. From 1992 to 2001 Russia lost through natural diminution more than 7 million people, and if you factor in migration [into Russia from other parts of the former Soviet Union – editor], the loss is reduced to 4.7 million. At the beginning of 2000 we were only 144 million as compared with 148.7 million in 1992.
According to numerous and distressing prognoses, Russia’s population will continue to decline. Presumably by 2016 it will have fallen to 134 million, we will have lost another 10 million. Growth through immigration will compensate less and less for natural loss.=
Today’s children and youth were born in the two last decades of the 20th century, they are the most active segment of Russian society today and will shape its future. To inject a “positive note” into the population, to raise its labor and other potentials, it is necessary to act immediately and effectively.
To do this we have to understand what the present situation here is. Regarding children and adolescents, one first of all notes the sharp decline in their numbers. During the 1990’s the number of children dropped by 7 million and their percentage of the total population fell from 24% to 19%, and it will go still lower to 15% by 2015 and to less than 12% by 2050.
In the next 15 years the number of children under 15 will decrease further by 8 million. By mid-century they will number only 10 million, that is to say a fifty-year drop of 18 million. These statistics cannot but provoke serious thought.
Depopulation and the decline in the youth cohort intensify the aging of the population. The country is falling into a vicious circle – a smaller percentage of children lowers the reproductive potential of the population, and this in turn leads to a decline in the birth rate, and eventually to a growth in the size of the older generation. And on to another such cycle.
Two factors are determining the decline in the percentage of children: a low birth rate and a high infant mortality. The overall birth rate in Russia is 1.2 and it takes a rate of 2.15 per woman to replace the population. In a number of regions in European Russia the rate has fallen to less than 1 per woman (St. Petersburg – 0.9; Leningrad region – 0.94; Smolensk – 0.95; Moscow and Yaroslav regions – 0.99). It is true that in other parts of Russia the rate is substantially higher, in the northern Caucasus and beyond the Urals ( Ingushetia – 2.39; Dagestan – 2.13; Ust-Ordynski Buryat autonomous region – 2.13).
Note that the rates in the developed countries of Europe are higher than Russia’s: Great Britain – 1.68; Germany – 1.36; Denmark – 1.73; France – 1.77; Norway – 1.84.
Infant mortality presents a still more unsightly picture. Over the past five years it has fluctuated in the range of 16-17 babies dying by age one out of every 1000 newborns. Infant mortality is especially high in the Koryatsk autonomous region – 30.2; in Tyva – 30.0; in Ingushetia – 33.0; Chukotka – 23.4; and in Karachaevo-Cherkess – 29.7. On average the Russian rate is 2-4 times higher than in the European developed countries: Austria – 4.8; Germany – 4.5; Denmark – 4.2; Great Britain – 5.8; France – 4.8; Finland – 3.6; Japan 4.0.
[The author identifies as another problem the low life expectancy of men in Russia – 59 years – the lowest in Europe].
All of the above are part of the demographic picture; the main problems are forming on its very foundation.
What needs to be said first and foremost?
We have to talk about the qualitative traits of the population, the quality of people’s lives, especially their health. There is a sharp fall in the physical, psychological and social health of the young generation, to which the following facts testify. First of all, the health potential of newborns is worsening with ever year: during the 1990’s the proportion of children who were already sick at birth more than doubled (2.4), reaching 40% of newborns by 2000. This is the national average. In some regions the situation is even more severe.
Secondly, during the life cycle from birth to maturity the health potential not only is not being restored, but is continuing to decline: if the share of healthy (or relatively so) among newborns is 60%, by the early grades of school it is only 12%, by junior high it is 8% and by senior high school, 5%. From this you can see what will be the health potential of our future labor force.
During the life cycle the greatest losses in health are among children and adolescents. It is no accident that contrary to the laws of biology, health problems are today shifting from old people to children and youth.
Thirdly, there is a growing proportion of school children with too low body weight, and here there is a process of deceleration (instead of acceleration) which has been observed by those in charge of military recruitment.
Fourthly, the indicators of sickness in children and adolescents continue to rise, both overall and in the basic categories of illness. … One fifth of pre-school children and half of adolescents suffer from chronic illnesses. Tuberculosis is widespread and so are other diseases of social etiology, including sexually transmitted ones.
Fifthly, in adolescents the indicators of psychiatric disorders are significantly higher than in the population as a whole. Two thirds of those suffering from those disorders have mental retardation. In children the prevalence of border neural-psychiatric disorders is as high as 79%.
Sixthly, there is serious concern about alcoholism, drug addiction and other toxic effects in children. Official statistics show the intensive growth of these illnesses, but this is just the visible part of the iceberg. Experts estimate that in reality the number of drug-addicted children is as high as 5 million. That is to say, every tenth child over the age of 10 is in this group.
As a result we observe two negative secondary tendencies in children’s development. The first is the growing invaliding of children. From 1990-2000 the number of child invalids from birth to age 16 grew 4.4 times and reached 675,000.
The second tendency is that each succeeding generation, as our research shows, has a lower health potential than the preceding one. Our health is worse than that of our parents, and our children’s health does not stand up to comparison with ours. Children are not replacing their parents either in numbers or in the qualitative sense of health. If we are unable to break these tendencies in the near future, Russian society will “swim” in the flow of illnesses that civilized countries long ago got rid of. Moreover the population will get sucked into a “societal funnel” of declining health potential and quality of life, from which it is not at all easy to emerge.
If we look at the intellectual potential of our children and adolescents, even with all the attention that is being given today to education and its reform, we see three negative circumstances.
First of all, experts estimate that 2 million children of school age are not attending school. The reasons are:
Homelessness and lack of supervision, when children either have no living parents or have run away from home, and are wandering the cities of the country, living in basements, railway stations, and abandoned construction sites.
The increase in child labor, including its worst forms, on the streets of big cities (for example, in St. Petersburg experts estimate there are 16,000 child workers). Subsequently, some of these youngsters end up in criminal groups or suffer sexual exploitation.
The extreme poverty and destitution of a segment of families, where the children have neither textbooks nor clothing, food, and transportation money to get to school.
Children of refugees and migrants obliged to resettle are often deprived of education.
Secondly, the cost to the population of education at all levels has been growing, and is today as high as one third of overall expenditures on services. The cost of education is a heavy burden on poor and low income groups of the population, essentially limiting their possibilities for education.
According to research data from our institute and from the Vologodski Center, the inaccessibility of higher education has increased 1.5 times over the past five years.
Thirdly, statistics tell us that about one million children for health reasons cannot get a standard education. They are obliged to attend special schools or classes, to study at home, or not study at all.
Fourthly, experts consider that 10% of those entering school cannot fully master the curriculum. Psychologists note that because of our negative socio-economic conditions, there has been a decline in the intellectual level of the population in Russia, and the decline is progressing.
The international research from the year 2000, in which 32 economically developed countries participated to evaluate pupils’ academic levels, revealed the following results. Russia’s pupils were lower than the international average. … One thing is clear – Russian education today is unfortunately not the best in the world.
The a-social behavior of children and adolescents remains an acute problem. Here one has to take note of: a) the rise in criminality, b) marginalizing, c) child prostitution. In 30% of families with children, one or both parents are obliged to earn extra on the side. These are usually families with three or more children, young families or single parent families. In these families even the children are actively involved in various kinds of household enterprise labor, and a lot of them are out on the street in search of earnings. In many cases this has a negative effect on their development and schoolwork. Some quit school before graduating, others are expelled for poor work. This leads to the formation of a larger group at risk of adolescents who are not in school, officially have no jobs, and left to themselves make up the “societal dregs” which are a threat not only socially, but politically. Research shows that most of them are actively hostile to the institutions of society.
The project carried out in St. Petersburg at the initiative of the ILO [International Labor Organization – editor] demonstrated the full drama in the situation of unsupervised children on the streets and squares in the center of the city, in the metro and train stations, where it is easy to steal or beg something. The researchers describe a specific case as follows: “Dima and Rita, who are about 12 years old, return to their refuge. There they fill a plastic package with paste. Rita, having sighed deeply a few times, doesn’t want to explain what several men, loitering about nearby, are waiting for.” According to the ILO research, almost all these girls are involved in prostitution, even though three fourths of them have one or both living parents and live at home. On average they are 12 years old. Economic reasons pushed many of them into this. About 80% of them say this is how they get food and everyday money. Some 15% “work” for organized groups that get them clients.
Why such a dramatic picture?
First of all, the health potential of the population as a whole is declining, and of women in particular, and of pregnant women and nursing mothers in particular. … The difference between the health potential of men and women fluctuates around 10% in favor of men. So there is still one controversial question: whom do we need to protect – women or men?
Special studies show that the health of children from very birth strongly correlates with the health of the mother. Here you discover the truth of the law of inheritance: “As the seed is, so shall be the fruits, so shall be the harvest.”
It has been established that at the start of their pregnancy only 13% of women were deemed healthy.
Epidemiological research testifies that the role of insufficient and unbalanced food can be comparable to the role of genetic factors and of active chemical or infectious influences. A study of the nutrition of pregnant women showed that every fifth woman received less than 1500 calories in a 24-hour period. About one this had a deficit of iron, iodine, calcium, biotin and vitamins of all groups. Pregnant and nursing mothers were found to have a deficit of ascorbic acid (70-80%), not enough B vitamins and folic acid (60-80%). It is also well known that not enough folic acid leads to a high risk of children with birth defects. Almost one half of pregnant women suffer from anemia.
Secondly, two thirds of children are raised in poor families or ones close to poverty. These children live in conditions of deprivation and limitation, of insufficient material and spiritual resources that are necessary for rounded development and socialization.
Thirdly, a strongly influencing negative factor determining the behavior of young people is the polarization of living standards and the resulting disintegration of Russian society. The radical changes taking place in the sphere of distribution and the injustice of social relations is disorienting to the young generation. The majority of children see, on the one hand, their parents without work or earning an exceedingly low wage, trying to work at many small jobs and finding themselves in poverty all the same. On the other hand they observe (including on television) the incomprehensible wealth in everyday life of a certain segment of people.
Fourthly, everyone is well aware of the helpless and economically vulnerable situation of teachers, which is ever worsening. Teaching is become marginalized. Special studies revealed that only 2% of teachers characterize the quality of their life as satisfactory, and only 10% consider that well-rounded nutrition is economically accessible to them.
They lack social standing to carry out their educational and cultural roles, since teaching has a low position in society. So whom and how are they bringing up and educating?
It is well known that the behavior in the broad sense of the young generation – its values, orientation, preferences – is in a fundamental way determined by the situation of the family and of the school teacher.
The school is losing the quality of social tolerance; the school itself is stimulating the divisions among pupils, setting them off against one another, through the means of schools for the rich and schools for the poor.
Fifthly the main factor, after all, is the condition of the family and inner family relations, where the reproduction of human beings and the important process of socializing children take place.
All over the world, women bear the major responsibility for bringing up children, since they give birth to them and nurse them in the first months of life. The idea that little children need the care of their mothers is not accompanied in a patriarchal society by an understanding of how essential a close emotional contact with the father is. Our researches show that in practice the overwhelming part of caring for children lies, as in the past, with women. The distribution of the burden between parents testifies to this. In Russia now, one more and more hears talk of the “absence of the father” phenomenon. Men are as never before preoccupied with earning money. Under the pressure of economic reforms, characterized by unemployment and inflation, married men are obliged to work abnormal hours to maintain the family. At the same time more participation in family life is expected of them today.
The institutional crisis of the family shows first and foremost in the weakening of one of its main functions – procreation – that is to say the birthing, caring for and raising of children. The family is precisely that social institution where the young child gets its initial socialization, and parental upbringing has a direct influence on the development of the child’s personality.
The radical changes involved in the formation of market economic relations are inevitably reflected in the family, in its internal relationships and its role in socializing the child’s personality.
The upbringing potential of the family and its effectiveness is conditioned by many factors, objective and subjective – not just the material conditions of life in the society but also the structure of the family itself, the personal traits of the parents (social status, level of education, overall culture, value orientations and goals), the psychological climate in the family and assistance to the family from society and government.
The behavioral deviations in children and young people to a considerable extent reflect the loss of moral orientation by many of them. The formation of social values becomes an important factor, as the society hastens to reject the old ones and new healthy ones have not yet taken their place as social imperatives.
Quite a few young people have become slaves to material things, which pushes them into monstrous criminality. There is a very large schism in societal consciousness and the level of aggressiveness is very high.
In conclusion, a few words about one specific problem – the war against drug addiction.
There is no need to talk about the importance of this. … What is surprising: today the whole fight has two objectives – to cure the addicted and to cut off the supply of drugs. Of course, both are necessary. But perhaps … we have to fight what it is that arouses the need for drugs and understand why this need is enveloping ever more layers of the population, and especially children. In this regard, our institute proposes appropriate methodology and practices that can broaden the preventive measures.
Turning to proposals and the answer to the eternal question, what to do, I want to say the following. The strategic direction of the struggle for the quality of children and consequently, the future generations in Russian society, lies first of all in improving the living standard of the population, in overcoming poverty, in lifting people out of a struggle for sheer survival. Without doing this it is impossible to resolve a single problem. First of all we have to feed and clothe all children, and then we can move ahead. As for tactics, here in our opinion there are three main priorities:
The health of children and youth, through programs to make future mothers healthier. Only this way can we lower infant mortality and improve the health of newborns and decrease the number of children becoming invalids.
An active prophylactic program against drug addiction to rescue hundreds of thousands of children and adolescents from inevitable death even before they have grown up.
Erecting a strong barrier to the “widening of the societal dregs” in the struggle with homelessness and lack of supervision among children. This would substantially improve the quality of Russian society not just today but for the future.
The main thing: all this must be done on the level of overcoming the causes, and not on the level of consequences.