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Ukraine SitRep: Bad Demographics – End of Support
Via a Responsible Statecraft piece I came onto a EU study that tried to predict the future demographics of Ukraine's population.
The War and the Future of Ukraine’s Population
The study is from early 2022 and is based on Ukrainian casualty numbers from only the very first month of the war. Their worst case scenario was this:
Our third and fourth scenarios assume that the war will continue for a month or longer so that further casualties and refugees are expected. We assume the following casualties: 5,000 deaths among soldiers and 1,500 civilian deaths based on the current trends. There will be 5 million refugees, which is an estimate by UNHCR (UNHCR 2022a)
The real refugee numbers are twice as high and the casualty numbers, wounded and dead, are of course about 100 times higher than the study assumed. It was thus not worth the money that had been spend on it.
Still, some graphs in it are usable.
Yesterday I shortly discussed the op-ed by the former British Minister of Defense Ben Wallace in which he asserts:
The average age of the soldiers at the front is over 40.
He then urges the Ukrainian government to throw more young men into the meat grinder.
My response to Wallace was this:
The young Ukrainians are gone. They either have fled from Ukraine or are wounded, disabled or died. You can not mobilize what is no longer there.
Unfortunately the real situation is worse then I had thought. The EU demographic study included this graph:
Ukraine’s population by age and sex in 2020
bigger
The 'age pyramid' in Ukraine isn't a pyramid. In 2020 there was a huge lack of 15 to 20 years old people. They were simply not there. They never existed. The number of newborns around 2000 must have been horribly low.
The reason for that was likely the serious downturn of Ukraine's economy after it had separated itself from the Soviet Union.
Ukraine’s GDP(PPP)
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It took a decade long severe recession for Ukraine to find a bottom for its economy. Bad economic times and low expectations of betterment had influenced the desire of its people to procreate. Two more downturns followed during the global recession around 2008 and due to the 2014 Maidan coup and the civil war following it.
Thus when the war started there were only half as many people of 20 year age than 40 year old ones. It is no wonder then that few of younger age are seen at the front line.
There is still one measure Ukraine might take to increase the numbers of young soldiers. There currently are exemptions from mobilization for those who study at a university. If Ukraine would draft these if could probably find a few ten-thousand additional soldiers. But it would also strip itself of its future elite.
The already bad demographic prediction some 20 years out would then look even worse than they currently do.
Early this year Ukraine's birthrate had hit a new low:
To keep a population steady, research shows it's necessary to have an average of about 2.1 babies per family — known as a replacement rate. In Ukraine, fertility rates have remained under that threshold since 1990. Over the last two decades, the rate has often dropped below what experts call a "very low" fertility rate of 1.3, when a population begins to shrink at an ever increasing rate. In January 2021, a year before Russia's full-scale invasion, the fertility rate was 1.16, according to national statistics.
The birthrate has since dropped further and is now the lowest one in the world:
Birthrates in Ukraine have fallen by 28% in the first half of 2023, compared to the same period prior to the war, marking the most significant drop since Ukraine gained its independence in 1991, The Wall Street Journal reported on Sept. 25.
…
Due to the ongoing war, millions of Ukrainian women with children were forced to leave the country, while men aged 18 to 60 were prohibited from leaving. As a result, many couples were physically separated, while others delayed starting families, the report says.
In the first half of 2023, there were 96,755 children born in Ukraine. Since 2013, the country's fertility rate has been dropping by approximately 7% per year.
The population of Ukraine will shrink further. In 1990 Ukraine had a population of more than 50 million people. Twenty years from now the country will have less than maybe 25 million inhabitants. This even if all refugees return. A large if that this is unlikely to happen.
Support for Ukraine is shrinking:
As Russia has become more bloodyminded, Ukraine’s allies seem caught in their own conflicting boundary conditions. There is no willingness to mobilize to defend Ukraine. There isn’t even a serious effort to ramp up military production to an adequate level to match, let alone surpass, Russia’s output.
And that’s before getting to the fact that Ukraine as a county has become a very costly ward of all its backers.
Yesterday a meeting of the EU's foreign ministers on further military assistance for Ukraine ended without results (machine translation):
The foreign ministers of the EU countries at today's summit in Kiev could not agree on the allocation of military assistance to Ukraine in the amount of 5 billion euros for 2024.
This was announced at a press conference following the event by EU High Representative for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy Josep Borrel.
The EU's budget for 2023 was €168.6 billion. €5 billion are peanuts but the EU countries could not unite over it. The senseless generosity has reached the end of the possible.
Borrel predicted the inevitable outcome:
Earlier, EU Foreign Policy Chief Josep Borrel said that the cessation of military support for Kiev from the West will lead to a quick end to the conflict in Ukraine, but as a result, the country will lose its independence.
A quick end to the conflict is what all sane people should hope for.
Look at the demographics and economics above and ask yourself what 30 years of 'independence' have done for Ukraine.
To end it could well be the best that could ever happen to it. Unfortunately for it Russia is unlikely to step in and to subsidize its further existence.
My sense is the 20 million population estimate is optimistic. The population currently living in Kiev controled territory is closer to 11 million.
Posted by: Exile | Oct 4 2023 2:48 utc | 193
That is probably the real number. Everyone, from UN to EU, adds Donbass and Crimea to Ukr statistics.
Posted by: rk | Oct 4 2023 6:58 utc | 215
If 11 million is the real population number that Kiev can draw mobilization from
Posted by: James M. | Oct 4 2023 7:41 utc | 221
Garbage In, Garbage Out (GIGO)
1. real number; Eurostat statistical methodology standards are notorious. Always read th the “special values”, “(combined) flags“, and “hidden elements.” It’s not the worst interpolation manufacturer. OECD, the UN, and every US statistical agency (eg. BLS, BEA, Census) share that dubious distinction. Yet each has contributed handsomely to the G7 cascade of sampling errors which rule a world of “facts”, riddled with abnormal, untestable propositions. Why is this custom problematic? For one, an estimate are not counts; they are perforce irrational numbers. Second, verdicality is the anthesis of “geopolitical” enterprises which is imposture. Third, Eurostatisticians rely on gov.ua—like all “geopolitical entities” of interest to EU—to report data which it cannot collect. Do note that Eurostat does not return any result, cannot produce detail engrossed by the total, for the simplest of queries, “Ukraine.”
2. real population: Meet UNData. Like all G7-dominated organizations such as OECD, it too relies on member state reporting. That is, UN independent research lacks scale capabilities; instead of acknowledging limitations of aggregate data, UN agencies employ conclusory statements that describe population groups enrolled in selective agency projects; and, more significant, standardizing (EU-English, harmonizing) data structure and collection methods (a controversial topic for OECD typified by “exceptional” US survey design). To demonstrate, examine the database filter disclaimers (“flags”) applied to UKRAINE population set, 1948-2022 (2023 is not available; 1970 first “de jure” census reported to UN by USSR; the next 1989). Another true fact is, the last “census-de facto [sic]-complete tabulation” in this century occured 2001, twenty-two years ago. There after Ukraine reported “Estimate-de jure [sic]” absent official census. Notice that here as well no UN total details population distribution per political division (OVA, oblast, municipality, settlement, etc) as gov.ua published in English with peculiar demographic distribution of “nationalities” in 2001. Pin that fact to “geopolitical enterprises”.
3. Kiev controlled territory: Whosoever assumes that gov.ua surveys populations of “occupied” political divisions in Ukraine is mistaken. The practice of segregating and excluding territory by “nationality” and population density is well attested since 2001. Most recently to demonstrate, I informed MoA readers about “sociological” programming in Ukraine sponsored by Canadian and US American agents (International Republican Institute (IRI), USAID, and Governement of Canada) Three bienniel “nationwide” surveys exemplify the practice, Eighth Annual Ukrainian Municipal Survey (2023), Crimea in the Public Opinion of Ukrainians (2018, and Public Opinion Survey Residents of the Autonomous Republic of Crimea (2009-2013). In each case survey administrators disqualified respondents soley by residence in Donetsk, Luhansk, Kherson, and Crimea.
So. There you have it. GDP and GDP per capita curves describing Ukraine’s economic activity, 1990-2022, are identical!
Carry on.
Posted by: sln2002 | Oct 4 2023 15:12 utc | 557
My sense is the 20 million population estimate is optimistic. The population currently living in Kiev controled territory is closer to 11 million.
Posted by: Exile | Oct 4 2023 2:48 utc | 193
That is probably the real number. Everyone, from UN to EU, adds Donbass and Crimea to Ukr statistics.
Posted by: rk | Oct 4 2023 6:58 utc | 215
If 11 million is the real population number that Kiev can draw mobilization from
Posted by: James M. | Oct 4 2023 7:41 utc | 221
Garbage In, Garbage Out (GIGO)
1. real number; Eurostat statistical methodology standards are notorious. Always read th the “special values”, “(combined) flags“, and “hidden elements.” It’s not the worst interpolation manufacturer. OECD, the UN, and every US statistical agency (eg. BLS, BEA, Census) share that dubious distinction. Yet each has contributed handsomely to the G7 cascade of sampling errors which rule a world of “facts”, riddled with abnormal, untestable propositions. Why is this custom problematic? For one, an estimate are not counts; they are perforce irrational numbers. Second, verdicality is the anthesis of “geopolitical” enterprises which is imposture. Third, Eurostatisticians rely on gov.ua—like all “geopolitical entities” of interest to EU—to report data which it cannot collect. Do note that Eurostat does not return any result, cannot produce detail engrossed by the total, for the simplest of queries, “Ukraine.”
2. real population: Meet UNData. Like all G7-dominated organizations such as OECD, it too relies on member state reporting. That is, UN independent research lacks scale capabilities; instead of acknowledging limitations of aggregate data, UN agencies employ conclusory statements that describe population groups enrolled in selective agency projects; and, more significant, standardizing (EU-English, harmonizing) data structure and collection methods (a controversial topic for OECD typified by “exceptional” US survey design). To demonstrate, examine the database filter disclaimers (“flags”) applied to UKRAINE population set, 1948-2022 (2023 is not available; 1970 first “de jure” census reported to UN by USSR; the next 1989). Another true fact is, the last “census-de facto [sic]-complete tabulation” in this century occured 2001, twenty-two years ago. There after Ukraine reported “Estimate-de jure [sic]” absent official census. Notice that here as well no UN total details population distribution per political division (OVA, oblast, municipality, settlement, etc) as gov.ua published in English with peculiar demographic distribution of “nationalities” in 2001. Pin that fact to “geopolitical enterprises”.
3. Kiev controlled territory: Whosoever assumes that gov.ua surveys populations of “occupied” political divisions in Ukraine is mistaken. The practice of segregating and excluding territory by “nationality” and population density is well attested since 2001. Most recently to demonstrate, I informed MoA readers about “sociological” programming in Ukraine sponsored by Canadian and US American agents (International Republican Institute (IRI), USAID, and Governement of Canada) Three bienniel “nationwide” surveys exemplify the practice, Eighth Annual Ukrainian Municipal Survey (2023), Crimea in the Public Opinion of Ukrainians (2018, and Public Opinion Survey Residents of the Autonomous Republic of Crimea (2009-2013). In each case survey administrators disqualified respondents soley by residence in Donetsk, Luhansk, Kherson, and Crimea.
So. There you have it. GDP and GDP per capita curves describing Ukraine’s economic activity, 1990-2022, are identical!
Carry on.
Posted by: sln2002 | Oct 4 2023 15:12 utc | 558
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