
                         Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: TUESDAY, August 9, 1994                   TAG: 9408110046
SECTION: CURRENT                    PAGE: NRV-1   EDITION: NEW RIVER VALLEY 
SOURCE: Associated Press
DATELINE: RADFORD                                LENGTH: Medium

RU CONFERENCE ON RUSSIA LOOKS AT POPULATION TRENDS

A coordinated national effort is needed to counter a shrinking birth rate in Russia that has contributed to that country's economic and social problems, a Russian demographer said.

Victor Perevedentsev told a Radford University conference last weekend that an estimated 40 percent of the population decline is related to the small size of the generation born during World War II. The generation born in the 1960s to the World War II generation was also small, and the 1960s generation is now of child-bearing age.

Perevedentsev also said there has been a dramatic reduction in Russians' willingness to have children and a move from larger to smaller families.

In advocating an initiative to boost the birth rate, Perevedentsev said greater population density would bring increased investments in infrastructure, particularly transportation. Such investments are needed to encourage economic development, he said.

Perevedentsev was the keynote speaker Saturday at the ``Geodemography of the Former Soviet Union'' conference sponsored by Radford and Dartmouth College. Emil Payin, an economic adviser to Russian President Boris Yeltsin, attended, and the State Department and the World Bank also sent representatives.

The population of Russia stopped growing in 1991 and has declined at an accelerating pace. Deaths exceeded births by about 600,000 in 1993, according to the Russian government's State Committee on Statistics. The birth rate fell to 9.2 per 1,000 people in 1993 from 10.7 in 1992. The death rate climbed to 14.6 per 1,000 from 1992's level of 12.2 per 1,000.

Appraisals have attributed the population drop-off to rising crime, alcoholism, economic depression and inadequate health care, but scientists attending the conference said those were only contributing factors.

``Critical changes in Russia are subject to very superficial interpretation - especially by the Western media,'' said Gregory Ioffe, a Radford University geography professor and native of Russia.

``Any demographic event we are experiencing today can only be explained by dipping into the past,'' he said.

Conference organizers said theirs was the first U.S. meeting on the topic.

``The importance of this conference is that literally up to now, most of this data has been classified,'' said Steve Pontius, Radford's dean of arts and sciences.

George Demko, a Dartmouth professor of geography, also said that vital statistics kept by the former Soviet Union weren't always accurate and followed different calculation methods from those used by Western governments.

``Now we're getting the first picture - an index - of how well off the Russians are,'' he said.

Demko said Russian population trends offer a unique opportunity for research.

``For the first time, we're looking at a developed country, one like us, at a time when it is under great stress,'' he said. ``That can give us some insight into how we might behave [under similar stress]. In some ways, it's like looking in a mirror.''

by CNB