"Current demographic changes in Kazakhstan"
On February 19, Doctor of Economics, Professor, Associate Professor of the Department of Recreational Geography and Tourism of Al-Farabi Kazakh National University (Kazakhstan) Lazat Spankulova spoke at the seminar "Modern Demography" on current demographic trends in Kazakhstan.
The speaker focused on three important components of the demographic balance: fertility, mortality, and migration.
If we talk about mortality, in general, in Kazakhstan in the last decade, except for the time of the pandemic, there has been a fairly stable annual number of deaths. On top of that, life expectancy was rising. The pandemic of coronavirus infection in Kazakhstan, as in other countries, had a negative impact on the dynamics of mortality. The absolute number of deaths increased in 2020 compared to the average number of deaths in 2017-2019 by 24% overall, by 27% for the urban population and by 20% for the rural population. The urban population has been affected by the pandemic more than the rural population due to the higher population density.
Speaking about fertility, Lazat Spankulova introduced the audience to the monetary measures to increase fertility in Kazakhstan. So, from January 1, 2020, a new allowance was introduced for large families: those with four or more children. The amount of this allowance varies depending on the number of children in the family. The introduction of this allowance served as an incentive for the growth of the birth rate. In the very first year of its implementation, there was an increase in the birth rate of the fourth and fifth children. At the same time, in regions of Kazakhstan with a high standard of living, the increase in fourth-order births in 2020 was less than in regions with a low standard of living, i.e. the population of poorer regions responded to the introduction of a new support measure, for which this benefit provides a significant increase in the family budget.
The migration situation is a concern for the Government of Kazakhstan. Firstly, this concern is related to the departure of Kazakh youth to study in other countries. According to the speaker, every tenth Kazakh student studies abroad.
The second reason for concern is migrants from Central Asian countries, who on average are less educated than the local population. Thus, Kazakhstan is losing young people who are education- and career-oriented and acquiring a low–skilled workforce in return. At the same time, there are various government programs in the country that promote the resettlement of ethnic Kazakhs. The discussion also touched upon the subject of migration to Kazakhstan from Russia. The speaker noted that migrants from the Russian Federation bear more socio-economic risks, whereas migrants from Central Asia bear more socio-cultural risks. Therefore, the speaker stressed the need to develop an effective migration policy to manage migrant flows. In addition to the "youth outflow", the imbalance in the population within the country is of concern: the outflow of the working-age population from labor-deficient regions, unregulated migration flows "village-city", "depressed region - prosperous region”.