Reutov, Russia – Russian President Vladimir Putin’s call for increasing his nation’s birthrate could be falling on deaf ears.
Putin’s plan to encourage second children would earn couples a one-time payment of $9,300 plus a monthly stipend of $110.
Conversations with young parents in this suburban Moscow town of 70,000 indicate that without broad improvements in the economy, Putin has little likelihood of spurring a baby boom in this former superpower, where 15 percent of the population lives below the poverty line.
Russia’s pliant parliament is all but certain to approve the incentives Putin called for May 10 in his state of the nation address: the $9,300 second-baby bonus payable when the child turns 3, bigger monthly payments to parents for the first 18 months after a child’s birth and better maternity-leave benefits.
But Russian parents don’t think those incentives will boost the birthrate enough to end an annual population decline of 700,000 in the country of 143 million people.
