"The demographic situation in Russia in 2008"

The invaluable Livejournal blogger demographer was kind enough to link to an overview of the latest Goskomstat figures on Russia's population profile. There is a lot of interesting stuff there.

Russia's population is stabilizing, largely thanks to the rate of natural decrease, well, decreasing sharply. As Scott and me noted earlier, the deficit of women of childbearing age will impact negatively on birth rates (as opposed to fertility rates), but a slowing down is good for everyone.

Migration is playing a secondary but still important role, with decreasing emigration from Russia and increasing immigration from the former Soviet Union with Central Asian states being particularly prominent sources. Armenia particularly, but also Azerbaijan, Georgia, and Tajikistan seem to be contributing migrants out of proportion to their shares of the ex-Soviet population.

The Central Federal District comprising Moscow and environs is overwhelmingly the main draw for internal migration (three quarters of the total), with areas of Russia from the Urals east to the Pacific and the Volga Federal District for international migration. Somewhat surprisingly to me, the North Caucasus Federal District is recorded as a net receiver of migrants, along with the Central and Northwestern Federal District.

14% of the population is older than 65, and 58.2% in 2008 (57.8% in 2007) are of working age. There's still unfavourable trends like the gap in life expectancies between women and men on the order of a decade, whether in Moscow or in the North Caucasus.

The only places with above-replacement fertility are ethnic republics like Tuva and Altai. I'm tempted to draw comparisons with other territories populated substantially or mostly by groups Canadians would call First Nations--the territory of Nunavut, for example.