Population Advantage, The Bear Is Not Seriously Wounded

Dear Blog

Sometime in the past two years I have seen an advertisement for a russian televisoin program. Fade in, to a medium shot of snow. Slowly advance forward and see that the snow is broken by something making it's way through it. slowly advance until you see blood smeared in the snow, slowly advance until you see a bear crawling, through the snow, deeply injured and struggling to move, finally collapsing in a last rattling exhalation. Add voice over that says something like "the russian bear is dying".

A lot has been made of declining longevity here in Russia combined with low birth rates. I have been seduced by the data and worried for the past few years myself. But in observing people here I have come to a different conclusion:

While Europe and Asia are drowing in a sea of elderly people to whom promises of social safety have been promised, these young Russians do not bear that burden. They can devote all their resourcdes to tehir own cutlure and their own family's future. With this confidence they can breed children that they can afford. And they can afford to build a new world around them.

It is true that the old are dying younger. It is true that alcohol is a problem. But it is NOT true that the young will not live longer. It is only true that the people who survived the second world war, and the difficulties through the eighties, have had so much stress and have so little promise, that they cannot live to their human potential. So this is a temporary problem in the data, not a trend.

For my part I will not say what I think of this situation, except to say that I have little sympathy for those who rely on the state. They get what they deserve.

Curt