GORKI, February 03. /ITAR-TASS/. Population growth in Russia in 2013 was largely a result of lower mortality, Russia’s Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev said at a meeting with deputy prime ministers on Monday.
“The natural population increase reached almost 23,000,” he said, referring to the latest data provided by Russia's Federal State Statistics Service Rosstat. “As far as I understand, the lower rate of deaths caused by various reasons made the most significant contribution to this.”
Russian Deputy Prime Minister Olga Golodets said Rosstat data would be updated, but it was already clear there should be no downward adjustments. On the contrary, the final data might be even higher than the current one.
“We have observed both population increase and mortality reduction,” she said, adding that the rise in births was in many ways connected with the program for financial support for a third child as well as some other programs. As a result, the share of third children born in Russia in 2013 increased by 9.6%, Golodets said.
“While the number of mothers has an obvious tendency to decline, the number of children has grown by 4,500 in 2013, according to preliminary data,” she said. “And we hope that the updated figures will show an even larger increase.”
“As for reducing mortality, this is methodical work, which includes different programs for the modernization of public health services, and I believe, that the further decline of mortality should be even greater than now.”
“We hope that all this will bring about precisely this overall effect, and that these demographic trends will last,” Medvedev said.