Why did Soviet fertility fall off a cliff after World War II? Because of a bleak economic outlook and uncertainty

After World War II, the Soviet birth rate declined steadily until the date of its dissolution.

Among them, there was a precipitous decline from 1960 to 1970, when the total fertility rate fell from 2.49 to 1.7, below the level of natural population replacement.

This is strange, there was neither a war nor a catastrophe during this period, so why did the birth rate drop sharply? According to population theory, a poor economic outlook and uncertainty are big killers, causing people to have fewer children.

A prominent example of this theory happens to be the Soviet Union from 1960 to 1970.

The Soviet population at that time was stressed and confused about their prospects.

The pressure came from two main sources.

Food shortage

In 1963, the Soviet Union produced 97.5 million tons of grain, surprisingly 21 million tons less than in 1940. This was still with the addition of five republics, but with an 18% reduction in production.

Khrushchev received daily letters from the snowy masses, reflecting on the lack of food supply and the decline in welfare.

--Life is getting harder every day. What were our difficulties? We remember the period after the war when black bread was enough to eat, while today to buy 2 kg of bread you have to stand in line for 3 hours starting at 7 am.

-- The radio and newspapers say that each year the food production is higher than the previous year, but our days are the opposite: each year is worse than the previous one.

--More than ten years after the war, life during war was better than now. This is especially true these days when there are always thousands of people lined up outside every food store, waiting for the pitiful half kilo of oil.

--The average wage of workers was the same as before the war: 400-500 rubles per month. Prices are not: for example, before the war sugar was 4 rubles and 30 kopecks a kilogram, now it is 11 rubles; cookies are 4 rubles and 20 kopecks, now they are 9-14 rubles.

--The weather is getting colder and colder, and my whole family doesn't have felt boots, because the stores don't sell them, and I can't afford to buy a pair for 250-300 rubles on the black market.

-- Dear Nikita Sergeyevich! This letter is written not by some malicious enemy, but by a Soviet woman, a mother, a teacher, and a party member. I am writing this letter and weeping, because the university students continue to attend classes for more than ten hours a day, despite hunger and starvation. Our Novocherkassk engineering college organized medical examinations of 1200 university students and found 250 people with tuberculosis lesions due to malnutrition.

--The current food supply to our workers is very bad. The workers question me every day about why there is no bread, no sugar, no milk, and I am dumbfounded and don't know what to say.

More serious than the letters from the masses was the instability that appeared everywhere.

On June 2, 1962, 14,000 workers at the "Bujoni" electric locomotive plant in Novocherkassk staged a riot because they were dissatisfied with the severe shortage of food supplies, shouting "We want to house" and "We want bread. "slogans.

Subsequently, they clashed with the infantry division, resulting in the death of 26 workers. After the incident, 7 organizers were sentenced to death and 105 participants were sentenced to 10 to 15 years in prison.

Housing Tension

During World War II, the Soviet Union destroyed about 70 million square meters of housing, and the accelerated urbanization after the war led to a decline in the per capita living space in the Soviet Union, even down to 2.2 square meters in the Donbas region.

During Khrushchev's time, the Soviet Union began to build "silos" on a large scale to solve the housing problem.

Speaking of "silos", they were a product of the planned economy and solved only the problem of availability of housing.

The "silo" has a long, dimly lit corridor, stringing a long row of more than 10 square meters of single rooms, each floor has a common kitchen, water room, and toilet.

A dozen square meters or so of a single room, to squeeze into a family of five or six people, inside the curtain separates the parents' "bedroom", the children sleep in the corner or corridor.

To save more quickly, "silo" uses prefabricated concrete structures, as much as possible to compress the private space. As the number of floors is within 6 floors, no elevator is set up.

The sound insulation effect of the concrete slab of the "silo" is very poor. In winter, the insulation of the houses is not good because the walls are not up to standard and cannot withstand the cold wind. As for the roof leakage, wall cracking, and other problems, it is not mentioned.

At that time, when the United States was experiencing a "baby boom", the number of abortions in the Soviet Union exceeded the number of babies born.

For example, from 1970 to 1974, 9.97 million births and 23.86 million abortions were performed in the Soviet Union.

The Soviet authorities were so puzzled that they conducted a massive questionnaire asking 20,000 women who had had abortions why they did not want children.

As a result, these women gave a very specific reason - "The house is too small, not enough to live in!"

The Soviet Union's demographic problems also drew international attention.

American futurist Peter Schwartz argued a few years before the collapse of the Soviet Union: the population determined the imminent collapse of the Soviet Union.

He said, "The Soviet Union's population has been shrinking in size, and there's nothing left to worry about in a country like this; history is on the side of the United States."