Demographer: Even after victory, we might be in a death spiral

Ukraine is facing a demographic crisis. Photo: gettyimages

Director of the Institute of Demography and Social Research named after. M.Ptukha of the National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine, Ella Libanova, in a comment to the Action on armed violence resource, stated that if women of reproductive age who emigrated from Ukraine were not back, the country would face the threat of extinction of the nation.

“If we can't bring those women back, it will be a major problem,” says Libanova. She says demographers are predicting "the Total Fertility Rate (TFR) will fall as low as 0.71 in 2023-24, the lowest ever recorded in the world."

“I think we are in a situation where Ukraine's population might be in a death spiral,” she says. "Even if victory is achieved, the birth rate will not recover. If you had asked me about the crisis before the war, I’d have said it was deaths surpassing births. Now it’s migration and natality.”

Earlier, the UOJ wrote that according to the position of the Institute of Demography, Ukraine is on the verge of changing the ethnic composition of the nation.

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