Reversing Population Decline in Georgia
Labour migration, low birth rates and a strong preference for boys.
Reversing Population Decline in Georgia
Labour migration, low birth rates and a strong preference for boys.
Georgia’s population could fall to half its present size in the next 40 years unless steps are taken to increase the birth rate, government officials and demographic experts said this month.
President Mikheil Saakashvili used an annual address to parliament on February 11 to set a population target of five million by 2015.
Official figures put Georgia’s population at 4.4 million last year, a million fewer than in the last Soviet-era census, conducted in 1989. Experts say there drop is significant even when the numbers are adjusted for the loss of control over Abkhazia and South Ossetia.
Avtandil Sulaberidze, director of the Institute of Demography and Sociology at Ilia State University in Tbilisi, says Georgia faces high mortality rates and low life expectancy, falling birth rates, and the loss of people due to emigration.
Sulaberidze calculates that 1.5 million people have left the country in recent years and only about 300,000 have come in, making the real population figure closer to 3.9 million,
Experts say the number of births has been consistently low over the last two decades, and continues to be outstripped by deaths in most parts of the country.
Economic policymakers warn that a shrinking population will curtail the prospects for growth and development in future. The authorities say they have major economic projects in train which will require much more manpower.
The main trend of recent years has been a steady exodus of working-age people in search of better prospects elsewhere. The latest official figures put the domestic unemployment rate at 16.9 per cent, although independent experts believe the figure is significantly higher.
Although marriages are on the increase, most families only have one child. Economic factors again play a role.
“I’d love to have another child,” 37-year-old Tbilisi resident Marina Maisuradze said. “But only my husband is working, and we are struggling to feed ourselves. There aren’t many who can afford to have many children.”
Demographics expert Anzor Totadze traces the overall decline in births to a preference for boys.
“As in other Caucasian countries, Georgia has a cult of the boy, so most abortions are because the child is not of the desired sex,” he said.
He said that between 1995 and 2004 the number of female babies born was roughly half the figure for the period 1980-1989, when overall population numbers were roughly similar.
Totadze predicted that this imbalance, meaning fewer potential mothers, would accelerate the decline in population.
He wants to see the government encourage childbirth through welfare benefits and assistance targeting large families and pregnant women. At the moment, the state covers only some of the costs associated with childbirth, and there are no ongoing benefits for large families.
The Georgian parliament’s committee for healthcare and social affairs announced last month that it was starting work on a strategy to address population issues, but the nature of its plans are still unclear.
The Georgian Orthodox has stepped in as well, announcing a new title of “Defender of the Patriarchal Throne” for the fourth child in every family. In 2008, the head of the church, Patriarch Ilia II began personally baptising every third child that was born.
Tea Topuria is freelance journalist in Tbilisi.
