The population of Ukraine continues to decline inexorably every year. You come to such a disappointing conclusion when reading the regular data of the State Statistics Service. Even in the second half of 2012, the population of Ukraine was approximately at the same level, which has not been observed over the past 19 years.
September 2012 even pleased with a slight increase, and the next month, in October, a similar situation happened again. However, the specialists of the State Statistics Service specified that Ukraine managed to get a plus to a greater extent due to foreign students who came to study at domestic universities, and people who came to the country in search of work.
At the Institute of Demography and Social Research, experts believe that thanks to the baby boom that Ukraine experienced in the 80s of the last century, the population has received a certain positive trend, which, apparently, is just coming to an end.
Svetlana Aksenova, senior researcher at the Department of Quality Problems of Demographic Processes, explained that today childrengive birth to those who were born during the baby boom. The birth wave itself, due to the tendency of women to have offspring later than the usual age, was somewhat stretched out. In addition, Ukrainian women began to think more often about a second child. However, sooner or later this surge in the birth rate will end, and the turn of those born in the 90s will come. And at that time, the birth rate was low… Therefore, even if the generation of the 90s starts to actively have children, this will still not be able to change the general trend, the population of Ukraine will continue to decline.
According to demographers, the nation of Ukrainians continues to die out. According to the long-term forecast until 2061, already in 2017 the number of citizens will be slightly less than 45 million, and in about 50 years the country will have 37.5 million inhabitants. And this is not the most pessimistic assessment. In the worst case scenario, the population of Ukraine will generally be reduced to 28 million. However, migration processes will undoubtedly make their own adjustments to this scenario. Migrants from underdeveloped countries will continue to arrive in Ukraine, so that the state will not become empty.
Naturally, demographers are not able to foresee all the factors that may affect their forecast. No one is able to reliably predict wars, natural disasters and other events that may affect the development of the demographic situation in a particular country. However, if all current factors and trends continue, then the forecast value will be very close to the real numbers.
At the same time, the dynamics of the birth rate will differ depending on the region under consideration. Thus, positive growth is predicted in the western regions. This is due to the fact that Ukrainians there are more religious and less likely to decide to have an abortion. Also, the western regions are inhabited to a greater extent by the rural population, which is aimed at creating large families. In the east live urbanized people who rarely create a family with more than two children.
Last year, Kharkiv (2.2 thousand) and Odessa (7 thousand) regions also showed positive growth. This is due to the effect of the same baby boom of the 80s. As of March 1, 2013, the population of Ukraine decreased to 45 million 529 thousand, which is 9.7 thousand people less than in February of the same year.
