if you read previous installments in SO series on demography, you’d see that the developments were relatively similar in Ukraine until the crisis as well. Ukraine was “democratic” after 2004, and it never had Putin. TFR (Total Fertility Rate) in Ukraine fell from 2.07 in 1987 to 1.08 in 2001 but then picked up to 1.30 in 2007.

There are also cases of Baltic countries. Take Latvia. TFR was 2.21 in 1987, dropped to 1.11 in 1998 and in 2007 stood at 1.41. Estonia: 2.27 in 1987, minimum of 1.28 in 1998, and 1.64 in 2007.

So, you see, the big picture developments in Russian demography are not that dissimilar to those observed in many other FSU countries: very high TFR in late 80es, nadir around turn of millennium, and a more or less expressed pick-up in later years. Unless you believe that Russia could corrupt statistical offices in the whole of FSU, you must admit that the effect is real.

On your “doubts on how things are so suddenly and so rapidly turning great when they were horrible a second ago”. Things are not “great”, they just turn less horrible, and it’s still some way to go before they turn normal. Did you have doubts on fertility statistics when Russian TFR fell from 2.23 in 1987 to 1.22 in 1997 and then 1.16 in 1999? Why doubt, then, that it went from 1.30 in 2006 to 1.41 in 2007 – it’s absolutely the same rate of change?

Finally, the data issue. All the numbers in this post are taken from this table: http://www.demoscope.ru/weekly/ssp/sng__tfr.php. Note that demoscope.ru is not part of Rosstat, and that their numbers for Russian TFR up until 2007 are exactly coinciding with Rosstat’s ones. For 2008, they did a lazy thing: took 2008 World Population Data Sheet from the US Population Reference Bureau, http://www.prb.org/pdf08/08WPDS_Eng.pdf, and copied numbers from there for most of the countries. The 2008 Data Sheet has been issued in August 2008 which means that many numbers, including TFR and life expectancy, are just 2007 official numbers (in many countries, these numbers become officially known with about a one year lag). In addition, the Bureau publishes TFR numbers rounded to one decimal digit. This explains the demoscope’s number of 1.40 for Russia in 2008, while the official one was 1.49.

I could do the same story over about the life expectancy: nothing at all but a partial recovery after the transition disaster. Why is it so hard to imagine that after a catastrophe life bounces back?

Here is a map from wikipedia showing 2008 data (it hasn’t changed much for 2010*):

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Ukraine_natural_population_growth_rates.png

Interestingly, within each zone there are specific trends. Although on the 2008 map even the worst post-1939 Soviet western province demographically is better than the best pre-1939 Soviet province, within the former group the 2 Volhynian provinces and Zakarpattia are better off than the 3 Galician provinces and Bukovyna. Within the pre-1939 Soviet provinces, things are worse in the north and the Donbas, and better in the south.

*In comparison to 2008, Galicia and Donbas have each gotten slightly worse, so that Ternopil province has actually dipped below Crimea in natural growth rate (-4/1000 vs. -3.7/1000), while all the other regions have generally been the same or have shown slight improvement. But the trends are still basically the same.

That said, far W. Ukraine is far more religious / traditionalist than the more “Sovietized” bulk of the country, so I’d expect to see their total fertility rate at perhaps 1.7-1.9 children per woman relative to Ukraine’s 1.46 average in 2009.

Ukraine’s Jan-May 2010 birth rate decline and death rate decline was replicated across all regions. (Thought the far western regions seem to have shown a slightly smaller decline in the birth rate than average).

Generally, the younger is the population, the more marriages one sees. It’s likely that Zakarpattia, in addition to being more rural, also benefits from more young people.

This year, a minimum price was introduced for a bottle of vodka which has probably led to a decrease in alcohol consumption, as not everyone would have switched to alcohol-containing liquids or home-made brews.