Population of Armenia; is there any hope?

[Tigranakert]

Armenians Shifting to 1 Child Family Model: Rubik Avagyan



"Five years ago I was saying that a shift is being made from the 1-2-baby family model. Today I cannot even insist on that. It seems that the 1-child family model has started to be fixed. This will be too bad. If this eventually becomes fixed by the people, then nothing will be of help," demographic scientist Rubik Eganyan said at a press conference today in response to Tert.am's question about the situation with the average Armenian family.

According to Eganyan today the state should encourage not the birth of the third but of the second child in the family.

"Here we should at least try to keep the wealth [meaning the tradition] of [having] the second child. If we do not succeed in it, there will always be families that will have the third, the fourth child, but it will not be serious to solve demographic problems at their expense," said Eganyan.

According to the data provided by Eganyan about 50-55% of children born are the first ones in the family. It is about the 30% of the population that has the second child, while the families that have the third child, make a little less than 10% of the population.

[Tigranakert]

Re: Population of Armenia; is there any hope?

UN Report Warns Of ‘New Wave’ of Emigration from Armenia

By Editor on May 17, 2010 in Armenia, Front Page News

YEREVAN (RFE/RL) — Armenia is being warned that it faces “a new wave of emigration” unless the government does more to improve the socioeconomic situation and strengthen the rule of law.

The warning came in a report by the United Nations Development Program (UNDP) presented this week.

The report — drawn up by local migration experts — called for wide-ranging government measures, including democratic reform, that would “considerably reduce the motivation of Armenia’s population to leave the country.”

At least 700,000 Armenians, or about one-quarter of the country’s population, are believed to have emigrated to Russia and other countries since the break-up of the Soviet Union in 1991 and the resulting turmoil in the region.

The outflow slowed significantly in the 1990s as the Armenian economy began recovering from its post-Soviet slump.

“However, despite the aforementioned process, the external migration situation in Armenia still remains alarming,” the report
says. “Moreover, there are certain factors that give reason to assume that a new, rather massive wave of emigration may emerge.”

The report says tens of thousands of Armenian men working abroad might eventually reunite with their families and cause Armenia to “lose another 200,000-300,000 citizens.”

It says another factor that could drive emigration is the ongoing concentration of agricultural land in the hands of wealthy individuals.

The report acknowledges an economic benefit of emigration in the form of cash remittances sent home by hundreds of thousands of Armenian migrant workers mainly based in Russia, Europe and the United States.

According to the Armenian Central Bank, those transfers totaled $1.12 billion last year — equivalent to nearly 13 percent of the country’s gross domestic product.

But it also says emigration has had a number of detrimental effects, including decreased birth and marriage rates and a brain drain.

Accordingly, the report stresses the need for “active intervention” by the state aimed at “limiting the volume of permanent emigration.”

It says that should be done through improving not only economic conditions but “governance practices” in the country. More specifically, that should mean “the adoption and restoration of democratic values in governance practice and the elimination of double standards,” according to the report.

“Most state officials are inclined to blame [the emigration] on socioeconomic causes such as unemployment,” says Vartan Gevorgian, a sociologist who led a team of Armenian experts working on the report. “But at the end of the day, people become poor not just because of a loss of income but also because of being unable to defend their rights…because of weak property guarantees.”

Speaking during a public presentation of the report, Armenian Deputy Prime Minister Armen Gevorgian said its findings and proposals would be “useful” for government officials dealing with migration. Gevorgian also said that the Armenian government was committed to finding “effective and radical solutions” to the problem and was currently working on a strategy of “state regulation
of migration.”

[Tigranakert]

Re: Population of Armenia; is there any hope?

What can we do to cope with this problem? It seems that people who get wealthier, tend to get less children than people who are poor, so a more prosperous Armenia is not the solution. A more aggressive state policy promoting people to get more children?

[Tigranakert]

Re: Population of Armenia; is there any hope?

THE LOOMING DEMOGRAPHIC CATASTROPHE, THE RULING REGIME AND THE QUESTION OF ARMENIA'S FUTURE EXISTENCE

Armenia and the Diaspora Must Act Now to Avert National Demise

Armenia and the Armenian people are on the threshold of a pan-national demographic catastrophe; that is if they haven't crossed the threshold already. If they don't take radical and decisive steps to alter the situation, the calamity will surely engulf Armenia and the diaspora and, in the span of a few decades, the government and people will not be able to avert death. The cause of the calamity is the dominant economic, social, political and psychological situation in Armenia today that, in turn, is almost totally the product of a regime that guarantees the monopolistic interests of one group of individuals. A change of this regime isn't only a necessity in terms of the demand for the establishment of justice. The immediate and complete change of the regime and its replacement by a system that corresponds to the needs of all the people is the only way to save Armenia and the Armenian people from unavoidable death.

The Looming Demographic Catastrophe

Trends in Armenia

Population trends do not bode well for Armenia

- According to official statistics, the population of the Republic of Armenian now stands at 3.2 million. It comes as a surprise to no one that this figure is inflated. Even the RoA Migration Agency, based on conducted studies, confirms that during the past twenty years from 700,000 to 1.3 million people have left Armenia for good (advancing the number of 700,000 evidently serves the country's authorities' to continue claiming a current population level of 3.2 million; the number of 1.3 million is closer to reality).

In reality, one can safely surmise that presently, on this portion of the Armenian plateau, (RoA, Artsakh and Javakhk) there resides at best 2.5 million individuals. We arrive at this number according to the following logic. In 1989, some 4 million individuals were living on this same territory. From that year on, at least 1.5 million (about 38% of the population) emigrated. During the same period the natural demographic growth rate was almost zero.

- Based on current official numbers, certain international studies predict that by 2050 Armenia will have a population of 2,334,000. This is a 27-28% drop when compared to the contrived 3.2 million of today. In reality, if current trends continue, one can predict that in forty years, the rate of depopulation will be much higher. Without exaggeration, if current trends continue, one can predict that the population on this territory will be less than one million souls. This would constitute the final stage of the demise of the Armenian state and the Armenian people.

Why such a calamitous prediction? If the population has dropped by 1.5 million during the past twenty years, then to assume that during the next forty years it will drop by another 1.5 million is not an exaggeration but rather, perhaps, baseless optimism. During the past two years, the exodus from Armenia has once again picked up steam and all the numbers are there to be convinced that it will continue and intensify. For a number of economic and psychological reasons, people are continually leaving the country.

An important sector of rural residents no longer farm the land, viewing such work senseless and unprofitable given the conditions that reign. They have sought their fortunes outside of Armenia.

An important portion of young people, whether or not they have a college education, see no long-term prospects in Armenia and have left or are looking for ways to leave. Young and mid-aged professionals continue to leave with the expectation of receiving a wage appropriate to their fields of expertise or in search of opportunities of greater self-fulfilment.

A not insignificant portion of owners of small and mid-sized businesses, tired and fed-up with the unending artificial obstacles placed before them, have refused to live with the empty illusions of reform and leave.

Young families that live in relatively good conditions are also hitting the road, concerned as they are with their children's future and convinced that the future does not bode well in Armenia and offers no real prospects. Even many of the just past adolescence children of the newly rich, mostly spoiled, prefer to live abroad, since they find life in Armenia no longer adequately interesting.

- Parallel to the exodus, the other factor conditioning the demographic situation is the natural growth rate. Here too, the long-term prospects are not encouraging, top put it mildly. The ratios of elderly to the young, of female to male, within the remaining population are skewered and distorted to the detriment of the latter. In many villages, only 1 or 2 births are registered every year as opposed to 15-20 deaths. A large number of young people, not having the resources to provide for a family, never get married. Just to keep the current population numbers stable, each woman must bear, on average, 2.1 children during her childbearing years. Meanwhile, in Armenia, this average is 1.36.

It is a known fact that during the last several years, it has been youngsters born in the 1980's that reached their childbearing period; a generation that in numbers was the largest in the history of Soviet Armenia in terms of relative births. Instead, this generation that should have become the main impetus for growth in the 2000's, gave birth to a unprecedented small number of children. If there were up to 80,000 births registered yearly during the 1980's, then only around 40,000 births have been registered annually since the year 2,000. This drastic drop in childbirths is the result of four factors:Emigration - the result of which a sizeable portion of the 1980's generation wasn't in ArmeniaConcerns about raising and caring for children due to poor socio-economic conditionsDecrease in the number of marriages due to socio-economic distortions and the numerical imbalance between the sexesIndependent of other factors, the tendency to have less children due to changes in socio-cultural traditions and preconceptions, when compared to previous generations.These four factors that negatively impact on childbirth levels are present today as well and their influence will grow stronger in the decade to come. However, a totally new factor will come into play in the coming decade at full force, seriously negatively affecting the growth rate. Those born in the 1990's will reach their childbearing years. This was a decade when the number of annual births, for obvious reason, hovered between 30,000 - 40,000. If,crudely put, not more than 40,000 children were born annually out of a generation of 80,000, we can imagine how many kids will be born from a generation of less than 40,000.

Given the existence of these factors and in the case that these tendencies continue, the precipitous drop in new generations threatens to have no end, continuing from year to year, decade to decade.

In the case of continued exodus and the unobstructed drop in birthrate levels, the forecast of Armenia having a population of only one million by 2050 could be regarded as overly optimistic.

Below are some demographic indices culled from the CIA World Factbook regarding how Armenia ranked globally in 2009:

Population growth - 205th place Fertility (number of children per woman) - 201st Births( per 1,000) - 161st Deaths (per 1,000) - 97th Net migration rate - 159th

- In face of the pending demographic calamity in Armenia, what are the trends in the neighboring countries? The emerging picture is very disconcerting, to say the least.

According to various predictions, Turkey's population will exceed 100 million by 2050 ( even though 20-35% being Kurds). Iran's population will top 100 million of which 30-40% will be Azeris living in the proximity of Armenia. By 2050, Azerbaijan is expected to have a population of 10-12 million. In reality this figure might be construed as inflated, because demographic statistics in Azerbaijan, just as in Armenia and Georgia, are highly suspect. Taking the entire picture into account, however, this cannot be seen as any consolation. In the end, the demographic picture of neighboring Georgia in the long-term is just as bleak as Armenia.

To get a more complete picture, we can compare the predictions for various age groups in 2050. By 2050, those in the 15-59 age bracket will comprise 48.9% of the total population in Armenia; 57.3% in Azerbaijan and 58% in Turkey. Those over the age of 60 in Armenia by 2050 will comprise 37.6% of the population, 24.7% in Azerbaijan and 24.8% in Turkey

Conclusion

- A few decades hence, Armenia, with a population of one million in the best case scenario, will have totally lost its capacity to resist. It will be incapable of guaranteeing security in the military, economic, demographic, cultural and many other sectors. The state will have permanently lost the objective and subjective levers guaranteeing its continued survivability. The remaining one million will have no chance of escaping being swallowed up by the hundreds of millions of jaws surrounding them.

- The only sure way of saving Armenia from certain demise is to halt the exodus, ensure a high birth rate and organize immigration. The only way to ensure the desired results is to remove all the impediments that prevent their implementation.

To be continued (Next: Trends in Diaspora)

[Tigranakert]

Re: Population of Armenia; is there any hope?

This is potentially a bigger danger to the existence of the Republic of Armenia than the threat of Azerbaboons in the east... makes me depressing when reading this. It looks like everyone just ignores this question, from the government to the population, we are not nationalistic enough and do not have a strong ideology to cope with this problem.

I fear this could lead to our end, the Turks are smart, it is not their goal to win in one war, they won't mind losing 10-20 wars but winning the last one. Everytime they inflict damage on us, hundreds of thousands of Armenians flee, and now we have reached the critical point that we can not afford another exodus of Armenians, as you can not maintain a country with a population of less than 2 million.

Statistics obtained by Index Mundi

[Haykakan]

Re: Population of Armenia; is there any hope?

Armenia needs a more sophisticated ruling class. I do not think the present oligarchs understand the nature of the problems their country faces (along with their businesses). Liberal immigration laws along with a more open economy which provides oportunities to more people will increase the countries population and their business's profits. What is good for the country is good for the olis but i am not sure they understand this. Charging 30%plus tax on imports when you dont have any domestic production of those goods (ie cars, boats..) guerentees that less people will be able to buy these goods thus will have lower standaed of living thus will want to emmigrate. The power to change this scenerio is very much in the hands of the ruling class(oligarchs). It is not too late to start but it needs to be done. I would create a new position of a domestic czar or something like it to do whatever needs to be done for the country and give him the power to do just that. That person needs to be well educated obviosly and free of curruptive influences. We need to put in power people who want to do what is good for the country and are smart enough to know what the good things are.

[Davo88]

Re: Population of Armenia; is there any hope?

It is a shame, but many other former Soviet countries have population issues as well, and it is time to reverse the trend before it is too late. If families are unwilling to have more than one child, Armenia should think of producing clones and such.

[Haykakan]

Re: Population of Armenia; is there any hope?

It is a shame, but many other former Soviet countries have population issues as well, and it is time to reverse the trend before it is too late. If families are unwilling to have more than one child, Armenia should think of producing clones and such.

The bigger problem is keeping the people in Armenia. The government insentives to families who have childeren wont matter much if those families leave the country. Both problems can be adressed simultaniously but creating conditions so Armenians will want to stay and live in Armenia is more important. Even if the incentives to have childeren are effective, their goals wont be realized if that child and/or his family leave.

[ashot24]

Re: Population of Armenia; is there any hope?

«Հայաստանցիների 39 տոկոսը ուզում է հեռանալ երկրից»

Նախկին խորհրդային հանրապետությունների շարքում երկիրը մշտապես լքելու ամենամեծ ցանկությունը հայաստանցիների մոտ է առկա: Նման պատկեր են ստացել Gallup հետազոտական կենտրոնի մասնագետները` ուսումնասիրելով 2009-ին ԱՊՀ-ի երկրներում առկա միգրացիոն միտումները:

Նույն հարցումը վկայում է, որ հայ երիտասարդները եւս նախկին սովետմիության երկրների բնակիչների շարքում ամենաշատը կցանկանային, հնարավորության դեպքում, ուսուցման կամ աշխատանքային որեւէ ծրագրով մեկնել երկրից: Հարցումները վկայում են, որ հայաստանցիները մեծ ցանկություն ունեն մեկնել արտերկիր նաեւ ժամանակավոր աշխատանքի: Հարցման համաձայն, նման ցանկություն ունի Հայաստանի բնակչության մոտ կեսը` 44 տոկոսը:

Եթե Հայաստանից հեռանալու ցանկություն ունի երկրի բնակչության 39 տոկոսը, ապա հարեւան Վրաստանից` 14 տոկոսը, իսկ Ադրբեջանից` 12 տոկոսը:

Երկրորդ տեղում Մոլդովան է, որտեղ բնակիչների 36 տոկոսն է երազում երկիրն ընդմիշտ լքելու, իսկ 53 տոկոսը` արտագնա աշխատանքի մասին:

Gallup-ի անցկացրած հետազոտության համաձայն՝ նախկին խորհրդային հանրապետությունների յուրաքանչյուր չորրորդ քաղաքացին, եթե ունենար նման հնարավորություն, կցանկանար հեռանալ իր երկրից` ընդմիշտ, ժամանակավոր աշխատանքի կամ սովորելու նպատակով: Նման ցանկություն ԱՊՀ-ի երկրներում այժմ 70 միլիոն մարդ ունի, նրանց գրեթե կեսը կցանկանար ընդհանրապես լքել իր հայրենիքն ու բնակություն հաստատել այլ երկրում:

Հետազոտության արդյունքում նաեւ պարզվել է, թե ետխորհրդային ո՞ր հանրապետություններում են առավելապես արտերկրից ստացվող օգնության հաշվին գոյատեւում: Այս ցանկը Տաջիկստանն է գլխավորում, Հայաստանը 4-րդ տեղում է` Մոլդովայից ու Ղրղըզստանից հետո:

Տվյալ սյունակում ամենացածր ցուցանիշը Ռուսաստանն է արձանագրել. պարզվում է, 2009-ին ռուսաստանցիների միայն 1 տոկոսն է արտերկրյա իր բարեկամներից ստացել օգնություն:

Հետազոտությունը անցկացվել է ետխորհրդային 12 հանրապետություններում եւ ավելի քան 13 հազար մարդու շրջանում:

http://www.azatutyun.am/content/article/2119369.html

That leaves about 20 or less percent of people who really want to live in Armenia. I understand people and their reasons, but still it is depressing to know. We already don't know what is the real number of our population, and the 3,200 million the government says it is a total lie. I guess it should be today about or less than 2,900 million, and it just keeps getting shorter every year.

Armenia is one of the few, if not the only, country where population decreases every year, it is unbelievable. This a greater danger for us than Azerbaijan or Turkey, a country cannot sustain without people.

[Davo88]

Re: Population of Armenia; is there any hope?

Why can't the Armenian government implement a program encouraging Armenian families to make children? Iran, with a population of 70 million or more, is going to do that soon. I'm sure that Armenian families would respond favorably to such incentives.

http://www.cbc.ca/world/story/2010/07/28/iran-population-boost-initiative.html