MOSCOW, April 12. /TASS/. Ukraine’s population will stand at 25 mln after the conflict is over, Kiev-based economist Alexey Kushch said.
"I estimate that [after the conflict is over] Ukraine’s demographic profile <...> will be made up of 25 million people, including ten million senior citizens, five million children and two to three million disabled persons and veterans receiving social benefits. About seven to eight million working adults will make up the core of the economy," he said in an interview posted on Ukrainian journalist Yury Romanenko’s YouTube channel.
According to Kushch, the country’s workforce stood at 17 mln several years ago, while at some points, the number even reached 21 mln. "We are witnessing a rapid decline in all respects and in terms of all structural elements," the economist noted.
He added that Ukraine’s birth rate was currently at an all-time low. Kushch stressed that demographic problems started to develop quite a long time ago, getting worse after 2010, when overseas labor migration became a mass thing. The economist explained that Ukraine’s population had been naturally declining for a while. With the death rate exceeding the birth rate, the country’s population kept decreasing 200,000 to 240,000 a year.
"The demographic crisis is a national disaster. <...> If we lose our demographic backbone, in the next ten to 15 years, the country will grow too weak to defend itself and effectively develop," the expert said.
Many politicians and experts have been talking about the demographic crisis in Ukraine for quite some time. Timofey Brik, rector of the Kiev School of Economics, said earlier, as cited by the British newspaper The Times, that Ukraine’s population had recently fallen from 36 mln to 25 mln. Ukrainian analysts are already pointing to labor shortages in various industries.