Half the women of child-bearing age in Russia have some kind of body weight problem, which is to blame for the country’s demographic issues, lawmaker Irina Filatova has said.
Russia’s birth rate has dropped to just 1.4 in recent years, prompting the government to consider a range of solutions, from tax breaks to restricting abortions.
“I would also like to point out that 30% of women of childbearing age have some degree of obesity, and another 25% are at pre-obesity stage levels, they have problems with excess weight,” Filatova said on Thursday at a parliamentarian round table.
“Without getting this under control, we can’t solve the demographic problem, it’s directly related,” the Communist Party lawmaker insisted.
Filatova reminded her colleagues of warnings by Health Minister Mikhail Murashko that 27% of all Russians are overweight, which contributes to cardiovascular disease, diabetes, and infertility.
”This causes enormous expenses for the healthcare system,” Filatova argued. “We need to not only fight the consequences, but deal with it at the root.”
According to the most recent statistics from the Ministry of Health, only 35.7% of Russians have a normal body weight. The economic damage of treating obesity and its consequences could be as high as 4% of GDP, by some estimates.
Only 1.264 million children were born in Russia in 2023, the lowest number since 1999, according to Rosstat. Among the proposals floated recently to reverse the demographic trend is the re-establishment of the “childless tax” from the Soviet times. The Kremlin has been disinclined to endorse that, or restrict abortions. The Russian parliament however, has moved ahead with legislation to penalize “child-free ideology” and “LGBT propaganda” as being hostile to family formation and values.