Transformation of marriage and fertility in Russia

In Russia, as in other developed countries, the number of registered marriages is decreasing, and the number of cohabitations and divorces is increasing. Chances of divorced women entering into a new legal and stable marriage are low. Remarriages are no more stable than the first marriages. All this leads to a further decrease in the birth rate.On the basis of the data from the sample survey of reproductive plans of the population conducted by the Federal State Statistics Service in 2017, the author shows that women in registered marriages have more children by the end of the reproductive age than women in unregistered partnerships. Women who remarried have more children than in the first marriage. But even they have the average number of children significantly less than the minimum required for a simple replacement of generations. Only one in five women of reproductive age, who ended their first marriage, was in legal marriage at the time of the survey. The average number of children of women in unregistered unions is higher than that of never married and divorced women, but less than that of married women. Doubts about the reliability of relationships with unofficial partners lead to postponement of giving birth to children.The demographic policy in Russia up to 2018 was mainly aimed at stimulating second and subsequent births in existing families, rather than creating new ones. Only in 2018 there were introduced significant benefits for children under the age of one and a half years. However, creation of a family begins not with the birth of a child, but with the entry into a legal marriage. According to the author, it is necessary to encourage registration of marriages.