Demographic Momentum and Fertility Responses to Pronatalist Policies: The Case of Ethnic Minorities in Russia

Population, space and place. 2026. Vol. 32. No. 2. Article e70241.

Kazenin K., Sergei Zakharov, Billingsley S.

Russia's Maternal Capital policy initially increased total fertility rates, stimulating much discussion on whether it would result in more births or only earlier births. Effects of that policy upon different ethnic groups within Russia, however, have not received systematic attention. Varying demographic, socioeconomic and cultural characteristics of ethnic groups in Russia provide a unique opportunity to assess policy responsiveness, especially in light of the potential expectation that culturally traditional ethnic groups or ethnic groups with lower levels of education and labor market participance may be more responsive to pronatalist policies. We use discrete event history models on IPUMS microdata from the Russian Census of 2010 to consider initial changes in birth probabilities after the Maternal Capital policy was introduced in 2007. The analysis concentrates on births of second children as this parity transition was the first to offer eligibility to the Maternal Capital benefit. Our results show, contrary to the expectation, that effects of the Maternal Capital were stronger among ethnic groups that had higher levels of education and labor market participation of women. Considering demographic patterns, we do not find evidence suggesting that ethnic groups with recently high fertility were more responsive, as might be expected. Instead, ethnic groups with a more intense fertility decline in the preceding period appeared immune to the policy. Our findings imply that pronatalist policies may not be effective when they coincide with deep social changes such as those that lead to intense fertility decline.

Keywords: fertility, ethnic minorities, population of Russia, pronatalist family policy