UKRAINE: Ukrainian radio station launches campaign and offers prizes to boost the nation's declining birth rate

Record ID: 588851

  • Title: UKRAINE: Ukrainian radio station launches campaign and offers prizes to boost the nation's declining birth rate
  • Date: 16th November 2006
  • Summary: EXTERIOR OF MATERNITY WARD VARIOUS OF PREGNANT WOMAN DURING HEALTH CHECK VARIOUS OF NEW MOTHERS AT MATERNITY WARD
  • Embargoed: 1st December 2006 12:00
  • Keywords:
  • Location: Ukraine
  • Country: Ukraine
  • Topics: Social Services / Welfare
  • Reuters ID: LVA8USCCPNTR6GHJT7AO1XIE6RR5
  • Story Text: Like many European countries Ukraine is struggling with low birth rates and high death rates. The country's population declines annually at a rate of 0.6 percent, but now a radio station has taken the initiative to try and reverse this trend.
    In general, the past decades have been hard on Ukraine, which has suffered throughout most of the 20th century. The Soviet genocide and World War II claimed the lives of as many as 12 million Ukrainians.
    In an effort to reverse this ongoing trend of depopulation, a radio station has launched a 'One Million Children' campaign to convince women to have more children.
    "Similar campaigns have been organised in Bulgaria, and Estonia,'' said Boghdan Bolhovetsky, director of Nashe Radio. "So we decided to organise this campaign in Ukraine as our population is shrinking, not growing. It is awful, but there is a risk that over a period of time we may be left without a population. There will be no country," Bolhovetsky said.
    The radio urges couples to register their newborns at the station and then have the chance to take part in radio programmes to discuss issues relating to children and parenthood. The advantages and disadvantages of having more than one child in a family, the impact of babies on women's careers, as well as the issues of orphans, homeless children, and the quality of medical services for future mothers are all topics to be debated.
    At the end of the campaign, in June 2007, a draw will be held where the main prize is a two-bedroom apartment, while other prizes include prams, toys and baby food.
    The station dedicates four hours of its prime time a day to the campaign, and many Ukrainian celebrities, sport athletes and musicians take part. Around 16,000 couples have registered so far.
    Ukraine is Europe's sixth most populated country with about 47 million inhabitants. This is a significant drop from 1993 when the country's population was 52.2 million.
    Ukrainian folk culture and traditions of toasts, songs, proverbs, and holidays emphasize health, fertility and long life. Many Ukrainians tell stories about their parents' large families, when eight to 12 children were the norm.
    "We should not expect that there will be a time when we will have no worries at all. There will always be problems. But this should not stop us from having children, from giving birth to children. And we are trying to encourage people (to have children)," Bolhovetsky said.
    During the 1990s, when the country was plagued by the economic collapse occurring throughout the entire former Soviet Union, many researchers thought that material hardship and instability were the main culprits in the demographic crisis.
    However, as Ukraine enters its sixth year of economic growth, the situation has changed little. Now some experts are saying the reasons for the crisis go much deeper, citing what they say is social and moral decay, which afflicted society in the late Soviet period.
    Fertility in Ukraine is among the lowest in the world. Demographers consider 2.1 the rate necessary to replace each parent. In Ukraine, the rate is about 1.3.
    "In fact to ensure a steady development each family is to have at least two children, or better have three. So obviously the country faces the task of encouraging families to have their first child, and give them maximum support. It is a more complicated task to encourage the birth of a second child, and even worse to encourage families to have their third child," Ukraine's minister for youth, family and sport, Yuri Pavlenko said.
    A low birth rate has implications also for the future labour force. As the Ukrainian economy grows, there is a shortage of workers. Western economies solve this problem in part by relying on migrant labour, which often leads to social tensions. The radio station's campaign is an effort to help avoid this scenario.
    "This campaign can improve the demographic situation but it is not enough,'' said Vitaly, a participant in the pro-children campaign. "The government needs to take a serious stand on investing money into young families,'' he said.
    Like Russia, the most probable source of migrant labour for Ukraine is expected to be from the Central Asian republics.
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