Russia’s ‘hypermortality’

An alarming new word has been born. It is “hypermortality,” which might be defined as an extraordinary tendency toward death. It jumps from the first page of the U.N. Development Program report entitled “Demographic Policy in Russia.”
“The Russian phenomenon of hypermortality comes to be observed primarily in working-age populations,” it says.

“Compared to the majority of countries that have similar levels of economic development, mortality in Russia is 3-5 times higher for men and twice as high for women.”

The effect of this will be to raise the dependency load (the number of young and old people dependent on those of working age) to 670 to 750 per thousand by 2020 and to 900 to 1,000 per thousand by 2025.

“This will inevitably influence economic growth rates,” the report notes.

“At the moment, there are no grounds to believe that the crisis will be overcome and the size of the population will be stabilized,” it adds.

The report, while commissioned and published by the U.N. agency, was entirely prepared and written by Russian experts led by Professor Valery Yelizarov, head of Moscow State University’s Center for Population Studies. It was peer reviewed by Germany’s Max Planck Institute.

In precise and formal scientific language, the report suggests that Russia is suffering the kind of hypermortality that is normally only associated with the effects of a major war.

In wars, young men die. That is also happening in Russia. The report says: “Without factoring the impact of AIDS, the number of males age 15-24 could decline by nearly half over the next 20 years.”

But factor in the effect of AIDS and the picture is even more grim.

Terra Daily