Russia is paying schoolgirls to have babies. Why is pronatalism on the rise around the world?

In some parts of Russia, schoolgirls who become pregnant are being paid more than 100,000 roubles (nearly £900) for giving birth and raising their babies.

- JENNIFER MATHERS

This new measure, introduced in the past few months across 10 regions, is part of Russia’s new demographic strategy, widening the policy adopted in March 2025 which only applied to adult women. It is designed to address the dramatic decline in the country’s birthrate.

In 2023 the number of births in Russia per woman was 1.41 — substantially below 2.05, which is the level required to maintain a population at its current size.

Paying teenage girls to have babies while they are still in school is controversial in Russia. According to a recent survey by the Russian Public Opinion Research Center, 43% of Russians approve of the policy, while 40% are opposed to it. But it indicates the high priority that the state places on increasing the number of children being born.

Russia’s president, Vladimir Putin, regards a large population as one of the markers of a flourishing great power, along with control over a vast (and growing) territory and a powerful military. Paradoxically, though, his efforts to increase the physical size of Russia by attacking Ukraine and illegally annexing its territory have also been disastrous in terms of shrinking Russia’s population.

The number of Russian soldiers killed in the war has reached 250,000 by some estimates, while the war sparked an exodus of hundreds of thousands of some of the most highly educated Russians. Many of them are young men fleeing military service who could have been fathers to the next generation of Russian citizens.

But while Russia’s demographic situation is extreme, declining birth rates are now a global trend. It is estimated that by 2050 more than three quarters of the world’s countries will have such low fertility rates that they will not be able to sustain their populations.

IT'S NOT ONLY RUSSIA