Fertility Dynamics in the North Caucasus: Do Maternity Subsidies Make a Difference?

Abstract

The paper deals with impact of state support of childbearing on fertility in the North Caucasus, with a special focus on subsidies for child birth of the second or subsequent child (so-called maternity capital), which was implemented in Russia starting from 2007. The study is based on fertility data from official sources (annual data from the Russian Statistic Agency and data from the Russian Microcensus of 2015), which allows a comparison of fertility indicators in the North Caucasus and in Russia as a whole. Total Fertility Rates for children of different orders indicate that fertility of the third and subsequent children has been higher in the North Caucasus than at the national level over the recent decade. The high level of fertility of children of the third and subsequent orders is an expected result of the maternity capital payments the state has paid. More firm evidence of special fertility trends in the North Caucasus comes from cohort fertility analysis, which we undertake using data from the Russian Microcensus of 2015. What was found was that, for all the cohorts born between 1950 and 1990, the fertility rates for second and subsequent children were much higher in the North Caucasus than in other parts of Russia. Importantly, in some regions of the North Caucasus those rates were also higher for generations whose reproductive period included the years when maternity capital was offered than for the preceding generations. In this way, this more detailed analysis shows that after the start of the maternity capital program, fertility trends in
the North Caucasus differed considerably from those in other parts of Russia, and that the differences can be at least partly explained by the more active ‘response’ of the North Caucasus to that program. That 'response', in turn, can have either economic or cultural reasons. The effect of regional pronatalist policy measures in the North Caucasus compared to other parts of Russia is also discussed in the paper.