Ukraine in a demographic dimension: the crisis phenomena in sphere of population reproduction in 1991–2021

Abstract

This paper completes the research triptych dedicated to phenomena of depopulation in Ukraine. Analysis of the crisis phenomena in the domain of population reproduction has been added by characteristics of statistical sources and methodological support of correct analysis of statistical information. The motive power of depopulation was founded on the transformation of the demographic regime completed in Ukraine in the 1970s. Accumulated in the age structure potential of demographic growth due to high fertility in recent times proved to be very near the exhaustion. In consequence of it loss, the natural increase of the population reduced steadily and its transition into natural decrease became inevitable. It has happened in Ukraine in 1991 and coincided in time with the beginning of unpopular market reforms. Though these reforms are regarded as the main cause of losses in the natural increase of the population, in reality the connection of fertility tendencies with the political situation at the beginning of the 1990s is relatively weak. In the present case more deep evolutionary conditionality of population reproduction processes takes place. The transition to the regime of narrowed reproduction has started long before the reforms. A crisis of post transitional fertility has arisen in Ukraine still before the USSR dissolution. Ukrainian people went through three profound crises during soviet period. Each of it was accompanied by demographic crisis in the form of considerable increase of mortality (death-rate) and essential lowering of fertility (birth rate). Today Ukraine is going through fourth demographic crisis: swift shortening of fertility and growth of mortality, dates back to the last decade of XX century and are lasting till now.