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The Baltic Demographic Disaster
- bdon 13y agoSo what happened in 2010? The article doesn't explain the most prominent feature of the charts...
- sp332 13y agoThat might be this comment: "It’s true that the Baltics suffered a particularly rapid outflow after the popping of their respective economic bubbles".
- nmeofthestate 13y agoI'm interested in levels of ethnic Russian emigration from the Baltics. Has this happened, and if so, how much does it contribute to this picture?
- aeontech 13y agoInterestingly, according to http://im.kommersant.ru/ISSUES.PHOTO/CORP/2013/02/21/dsryu4.gif http://im.kommersant.ru/ISSUES.PHOTO/CORP/2013/02/21/dsryu4...., the Baltics combined have the largest russian diaspora in the world, followed by USA, Germany and Israel. Probably due to the proximity and relative ease of emigration from Russia to the Baltic states. If you read russian, here is a series of articles with advice on various emigration destinations. It's an interesting view into the current mindset there. http://www.kommersant.ru/doc/2132694 http://www.kommersant.ru/doc/2132694
- fusiongyro 13y agoI don't, so if you're inclined to give a summary I'd appreciate it.
- userulluipeste 13y agoThere are countries that are not considered in that report, and some of them are big, with a major quota of Russian population (like Ukraine). That's probably because Russians don't have a diaspora there (and as far as I know people usually are considering a diaspora when they feel themselves outsiders in some way).
- sqrt28 13y agoIt didn't happen and it does not contribute to the picture at all. People emigrated to the west (mostly Great Britain, Ireland and Spain), including the Russian speaking part. The jump in the graph happened when the most recent economic crisis hit Baltic countries and drove their GDP roughly 20% down in a year.
- Tuna-Fish 13y agoThey are the main component of the population loss. In 1989, the last census while in the USSR, the Baltics held a population of 1.7M ethnic Russians. After regaining independence, Estonia and Latvia denied citizenship to all post-1940 Russian immigrants (and their families). Today, only a million ethnic Russians remain. Some have been naturalized, but a lot have simply bailed, because the national populations are quite hostile to them.
- slc 13y agoCan't speak about Estonia but in case of Latvia the idea of russian speaking people emigrating because of hostility is just ridiculous.
- jdmitch 13y agoI think that is actually a huge factor, and one of the key obvious things that the OP overlooked. Latvia (and I suspect the whole Baltic region) was at an artificially inflated population peak when the Soviet Union collapsed. It was one of the most economically prosperous areas of the Soviet Union, and had huge Soviet military bases. Retirement on the Baltic coast was the dream for military brass as well as many other Soviets in the 80s. Additionally, the freedom movements and greater autonomy in the second half of the 80s may have attracted others from other Soviet Republics. Since independence, and particularly recently, Russians (who once made up over half of Latvia's population) have left, and in many cases not been welcome to stay. One of the major tensions in Latvian politics today is the status of Russian Latvians. With that backdrop (and given the other factors, such as migration to the rest of the EU) it isn't really that surprising that population levels are returning to that of the 60's.
- kibwen 13y ago"over the past two decades, their populations have collapsed at a historically unprecedented rate." I don't think it's completely unprecedented, but I doubt that people will take heart in being compared favorably to the Black Death. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_Death https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_Death
- vanderZwan 13y agoAnd what if we narrow it down to population collapse as a result of emigration?
- kibwen 13y agoThe only thing that immediately comes to mind is the Great Irish Famine, wherein around 10% of the population may have emigrated away. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Famine_%28Ireland%29 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Famine_%28Ireland%29 I'm certain there are other historical mass migrations of such enormous magnitude, but my point was really to glibly provide perspective for such a massive population decrease.
- berntb 13y agoI would assume many/most of those emigrated people are in Scandinavia. It is a bit smaller step than moving to USA in the 19th century... (And much easier to move back, when the economy allows it.) A more relevant parallel might be many internal moves in big countries to industrial areas, when industrialisation started.
- jeffdavis 13y agoIt doesn't seem wildly different from say, Detroit. It looks like the population declined about 30% over the last 20 years[1]. Granted, the population is smaller than the Baltic states, but the population of the Baltic states is also smaller than that of Russia. [1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographic_history_of_Detroit http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographic_history_of_Detroit
- stevoski 13y agoThis seems an overly simplistic discussion of a single chart. Is it ethnic Russians leaving these countries? Why the sudden drop in one year, which seems to represent a change of definitions?
- gruseom 13y agoA blog post will inevitably oversimplify a demographic chart involving millions of people. It's still an interesting chart. The sudden drop in one year, as the article points out, was likely because of the economic crisis. As for whether it's ethnic Russians leaving the country, it's not obvious to me why that is the first thing that matters; most discussions on population and economics don't immediately leap to ethnicity, do they?
- seanmcdirmid 13y agoOf course ethnicity matters. If most of the outflow is Russian, then to intentionally ignore that connection is intellectually dishonest.
- gruseom 13y agoOf course there's no question of intentionally ignoring anything. My question is about the economics. Presumably, the economic significance of population decline has to do with its effect on GDP, growth, and the like. It's not obvious (is it?) which of these questions have answers that change depending on the ethnicity of who comes or goes. There's also the question of whether the outflow does in fact consist mostly of Russians. Is there data on this? No one has presented any here, and the various comments in the thread contradict one another.
- seanmcdirmid 13y agoIt would be extremely useful to know if the outflow are a lot of say "aging Russians" or "young Estonian/Latvians", as each would have extremely different implications. The fact that the information is missing in the article means we can only speculate. Perhaps the information is obscured or those statistics aren't collected, but without knowing, it is much more difficult to find the cause and ultimately come up with a solution.
- bradleyland 13y agoForbes, yeesh. It may be trite to roll out the correlation-is-not-causation argument, but this is so incredibly blatant it turns my stomach. The author's thesis could be summarized as: The Baltic population level has declined consistently since 1992, therefore Baltic economic policies must not be as desirable as some make them out to be. Population migration and economic policy are two astoundingly broad topics. Any attempt to link the two requires at least some analysis of each. This article contains none. Flagged.
- gruseom 13y agoThat's not fair at all. The author's points are: 1) there has been a major population decline in the Baltics; 2) the decline is staggering even by comparison to Russia, which is widely thought to have a problem with population; 3) people making claims about economic reform in the Baltics should not ignore such a major factor.
- bradleyland 13y agoPoints 1 & 2 are facts, and are not in dispute, but point 3 is a question, not a statement. "Don't ignore population growth/decline when examining economic reform." Ok, but what of it? Is anyone ignoring that? If the author believes that the population decline in the Baltics is due to the economic policy therein, then they should find ways to establish that causal relationship, not just point at a graph and say "see here".
- gruseom 13y agoYou're complaining about a causality claim that he never makes.
- acjohnson55 13y agoHe only nods his head repeatedly in its general direction.
- mjn 13y ago
- vldmit 13y agoIt is not correct to compare population of Russia and Baltic countries. They border each other, but live in completely different economic spaces. No doubts that author, who position himself as Russia watcher, is familiar with the demography in russian regions bordering with baltic states. Depopulation there is the same if not more severe that in Latvia or Estonia, yet author just 'forget' to mention that little detail.
- a8da6b0c91d 13y agoSome of the hype about Russian population decline is overblown. Whereas people under communism formed families young, now careers take longer to establish and people tend to have kids older just as in the west. This transition contributed to a period of suppressed birth rates, but births are increasing now.
- freehunter 13y agoSo what are the immigration policies of these Baltic states? How are they enticing new citizens? Have they relaxed their immigration criteria to try to get more citizens, or is it strict? If I wanted to immigrate to, say, Estonia next year, how difficult would it be?
- adamgravitis 13y agoThey're all Eurozone now, so EU citizens can move between those countries without issue. Part of the population decline can be attributed to youth moving to central Europe for work. Additionally, other posters have been right about ethnic Russians leaving the Baltics, which is something governments have actually been trying to encourage anyhow. The Soviets had hugely increased the number of ethnic Russians in the Baltics, nearly to the point of overtaking the native populations. Wikipedia has a partial graph for Latvia: http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/b/b1/Ethnic_groups_in_Latvia.png http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/b/b1/Ethnic_gr...
- rimantas 13y ago> The Soviets had hugely increased the number of ethnic > Russians in the Baltics It depends on country a lot. E.g. in Estonia 70% are Estonians and 25% are Russians, meanwhile in Lithuania 84% are Lithuanians and less than 6% are Russians—there are more Poles than Russians.
- Lapsa 13y agoNo one wants to immigrate here. And actually, I'm happy with that.
- jacquesm 13y agoP.O.E.
- mb_72 13y agoThen that could well make you one of ultra-nationalistic Estonians who would rather see their country and language die rather than have it be 'tainted'. I'm half Australian and half Estonian - and have citizenship of both countries. I've worked as a developer in both countries, and currently reside (and work) in Estonia. I see this attitude all the time in Estonia; despite the obvious need for immigration, many people would rather see the population keep on decreasing. Currently it's simply too difficult for professionals to get an Estonian visa, and wages are not attractive enough, in general, to attract those with an EU passport. This is part of the problem that will, in time, kill Estonia and likely the other Baltic countries.
- sologoub 13y agoThe Baltic demographic situation is indeed very complex. The article does little justice to this. Someone has already raised the question of ethnic Russians and other non-Baltic origin leaving these countries. This section of the population actually have a very strong incentive to leave - they are considered non-citizen and have none of the EU privileges[1]. According to the same Wikipedia article, Latvia alone started out with 715k non-citizen in 1991, and now has 290,660 as of March 2011 census. Some left, some died and some became citizen, but the drop is huge and the outflow is intentional with the aim of increasing the proportion of "native" ethnic groups. At the same time, Russia has been taking in immigrants. The 1 million drop does not show the changes in underlying ethnic proportions. Russian politicians have not been as concerned with maintaining the ethnic composition, which they may start to look at as the riots fueled by ethnic tensions have become much more common. In any case, pure economic speculations don't do justice to that region. It's a very complex balancing act, with nationalists on both sides willing to chop of their nose to spite their face. [1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Non-citizens_(Latvia) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Non-citizens_(Latvia)
- kristaps 13y ago> as the riots fueled by ethnic tensions have become much more common You seem to imply that there are already "riots fueled by ethnic tensions", care to point to an example?
- myth_drannon 13y agoPlenty... just a recent one is in Pugachyovo(Russians vs Chechens) The state media tries to suppress the news but Livejournal is full of blog posts with photos.
- sologoub 13y agoExactly. There are also examples from across the country that seem to flare-up periodically. Western media doesn't cover most of them as they tend to be smaller-scale scuffles.
- 13y ago
- dharma1 13y agothe same is happening in many other countries where salaries are a third of (relatively) nearby countries and people are free to move. I don't expect the population decline in the Baltics to continue at that pace though
- jdangu 13y agoIs it a good idea to build an offshore software development team in one of the baltic countries? Anyone has some perspective with that?
- bergerjac 13y agoI can't say anything for the Baltic region; however, I'm currently in the Balkans. If you can connect American customers with offshore developers, there would be money to be had. I'm currently working with some web devs and their previous work and the tools they use exemplifies their skills.
- slc 13y agoThere are already local "franchises" of the large companies like Tietonator and Accenture. The computer science department of the Latvian University, which provides free government funded education in computer science is basically controlled by stock holders of such large offshoring companies. The problem is - the country is very small. About 2 million people. So even taking into account the free education, the absolute number of competent programmers will be quite small. It is already a challenge to find employees for basic web development positions.
- Plasmoid 13y agoJRebel is produced in Estonia. So it seems to work out well.
- Dewie 13y agoI have lived with three or four Latvians. Two of them said that they moved from Latvia because, while they could get work there, they couldn't really get by on the wages offered by those jobs.
- MrKey 13y agoDepopulation is not a disaster. We save the world!