The Baltic demographic situation is indeed very complex. The article does little justice to this.
Someone has already raised the question of ethnic Russians and other non-Baltic origin leaving these countries. This section of the population actually have a very strong incentive to leave - they are considered non-citizen and have none of the EU privileges[1].
According to the same Wikipedia article, Latvia alone started out with 715k non-citizen in 1991, and now has 290,660 as of March 2011 census. Some left, some died and some became citizen, but the drop is huge and the outflow is intentional with the aim of increasing the proportion of "native" ethnic groups.
At the same time, Russia has been taking in immigrants. The 1 million drop does not show the changes in underlying ethnic proportions. Russian politicians have not been as concerned with maintaining the ethnic composition, which they may start to look at as the riots fueled by ethnic tensions have become much more common.
In any case, pure economic speculations don't do justice to that region. It's a very complex balancing act, with nationalists on both sides willing to chop of their nose to spite their face.
Mixing in the non-citizens in a discussion about demographics seems wrong. Most of the non-citizens are people around retirement age - factory workers who were sent in the country from other soviet countries, military families and so on. The cause for reduction in numbers of non-citizens is simple - they died.
Also claiming that they have an incentive to leave the country seems wrong, because the requirements to acquire citizenship are so easy. You just have to prove that you understand the Latvian language at a very basic level. If you can do that, then you get citizenship. Much easier than moving to a different country.
> Also claiming that they have an incentive to leave the country seems wrong
I don't know about that, ever been to Narva? Ethnic Russians are, at least to some extent, in a position similar to that of African Americans in the US, but it is easier for them to leave since they just arrived a few decades ago, whereas African Americans have been in the US long enough to have established long-term connections and to have lost contact with the "old world". So it seems pretty reasonable to me to say that Ethnic Russians have an incentive to leave the Baltic states.
No, I haven't. I live in Latvia. I'm sure that the older generation of Estonians don't like the russians, because they blame them for the ~50 years of life under a communist dicatorship, the relatives lost in the siberian death camps and so on. But comparing this dislike to the history of slavery and segregation, linchings and so on of african americans seems stupid and the qualification of "to some extent" doesn't remedy that. Again, can't really speak about Estonia, if you would claim that the russian speaking people can't sit in the front of the bus, I wouldn't be able to refute it other than to express my sincere disbelief.
You could make that comparison if African Americans had been invaders of the US, but not otherwise.
Narva is a huge problem for the Estonian government - unemployment there is high, and the educational institutions struggle to field teachers who can teach in Estonian. As a result, young people with a Russian background are at a disadvantage with respect to basic language skills.
It's also fair to say there are a number of those in Narva who wish for their 'countrymen' to come rolling over the border again.
Why does it matter how a discriminated-against minority group got to a place? Russian Balts are treated poorly. African Americans are treated poorly. Both groups suffer from lack of opportunities, institutional discrimination at various points, and a cycle of poverty caused largely by bigotry. How they got there is really immaterial.
You forgot to compare the treatment of the russian speaking people in the baltic states to the treatment of jews in the nazi germany. Both were treated poorly.
They sure are Americans, but try telling that to a good portion of the US population and you'll get some push back, unfortunately... Racism is alive and well in America, just like anti-Russian sentiments are alive and well in the Baltics. The Russian minority in the Baltics suffers from many of the same problems modern African Americans do: discrimination, systemic poverty, lack of opportunity, etc.
That doesn't sound right - if I speak fluent Russian and I'm older than 15, it's probably easier for me to move to a Russian-speaking country (where I might have family) than learn Latvian. Especially if my social circle in Latvia is exclusively Russian speaking.
If you're 15, then you have already received free government funded latvian language courses for 9 years in school. It's part of the curriculum. You'd have to be especially lazy to not be able to pass the citizenship exams.
What if the parents chose to send the kid to Russian-language school?
In any case, you have a point that if someone WANTED to integrate into Latvian society, they could. What I'm questioning is the desire.
Having immigrated to US and adapted to that society, I'd have to say that moving "back" to the country where you already speak the language and identify with the society is quite a bit easier than to fully integrate into something you are not used to. It's all in the will of a person and the economic incentives to do so. For me in the US, I had the resolve and very strong financial against to be had if I followed through.
If you take Switzerland as an example, their extremely high citizenship requirements are well supported by the high standard of living and long term benefits. Unfortunately, Latvia, together with the rest of the Baltic states does not yet have such a strong position. I suspect when it does, such complaints will end, as people will be happy to do the work for the reward.
Plenty...
just a recent one is in Pugachyovo(Russians vs Chechens)
The state media tries to suppress the news but Livejournal is full of blog posts with photos.
Exactly. There are also examples from across the country that seem to flare-up periodically. Western media doesn't cover most of them as they tend to be smaller-scale scuffles.
Forbes, yeesh. It may be trite to roll out the correlation-is-not-causation argument, but this is so incredibly blatant it turns my stomach.
The author's thesis could be summarized as: The Baltic population level has declined consistently since 1992, therefore Baltic economic policies must not be as desirable as some make them out to be.
Population migration and economic policy are two astoundingly broad topics. Any attempt to link the two requires at least some analysis of each. This article contains none.
That's not fair at all. The author's points are: 1) there has been a major population decline in the Baltics; 2) the decline is staggering even by comparison to Russia, which is widely thought to have a problem with population; 3) people making claims about economic reform in the Baltics should not ignore such a major factor.
Points 1 & 2 are facts, and are not in dispute, but point 3 is a question, not a statement.
"Don't ignore population growth/decline when examining economic reform."
Ok, but what of it? Is anyone ignoring that? If the author believes that the population decline in the Baltics is due to the economic policy therein, then they should find ways to establish that causal relationship, not just point at a graph and say "see here".
In footnote (3) it says emigration figures for Lithuania -- the largest of the Baltics -- are overstated in 2010 and 2011. Those years include emigrants who had left in previous years but hadn't been counted.
A blog post will inevitably oversimplify a demographic chart involving millions of people. It's still an interesting chart.
The sudden drop in one year, as the article points out, was likely because of the economic crisis. As for whether it's ethnic Russians leaving the country, it's not obvious to me why that is the first thing that matters; most discussions on population and economics don't immediately leap to ethnicity, do they?
Of course there's no question of intentionally ignoring anything. My question is about the economics. Presumably, the economic significance of population decline has to do with its effect on GDP, growth, and the like. It's not obvious (is it?) which of these questions have answers that change depending on the ethnicity of who comes or goes.
There's also the question of whether the outflow does in fact consist mostly of Russians. Is there data on this? No one has presented any here, and the various comments in the thread contradict one another.
It would be extremely useful to know if the outflow are a lot of say "aging Russians" or "young Estonian/Latvians", as each would have extremely different implications. The fact that the information is missing in the article means we can only speculate. Perhaps the information is obscured or those statistics aren't collected, but without knowing, it is much more difficult to find the cause and ultimately come up with a solution.
So what are the immigration policies of these Baltic states? How are they enticing new citizens? Have they relaxed their immigration criteria to try to get more citizens, or is it strict?
If I wanted to immigrate to, say, Estonia next year, how difficult would it be?
They're all Eurozone now, so EU citizens can move between those countries without issue. Part of the population decline can be attributed to youth moving to central Europe for work.
Additionally, other posters have been right about ethnic Russians leaving the Baltics, which is something governments have actually been trying to encourage anyhow. The Soviets had hugely increased the number of ethnic Russians in the Baltics, nearly to the point of overtaking the native populations.
> The Soviets had hugely increased the number of ethnic
> Russians in the Baltics
It depends on country a lot. E.g. in Estonia 70% are Estonians and 25% are Russians, meanwhile in Lithuania 84% are Lithuanians and less than 6% are Russians—there are more Poles than Russians.
Then that could well make you one of ultra-nationalistic Estonians who would rather see their country and language die rather than have it be 'tainted'.
I'm half Australian and half Estonian - and have citizenship of both countries. I've worked as a developer in both countries, and currently reside (and work) in Estonia. I see this attitude all the time in Estonia; despite the obvious need for immigration, many people would rather see the population keep on decreasing. Currently it's simply too difficult for professionals to get an Estonian visa, and wages are not attractive enough, in general, to attract those with an EU passport. This is part of the problem that will, in time, kill Estonia and likely the other Baltic countries.
I actually do like the Baltic states, and wouldn't mind moving. I don't speak Estonian, but I do know a bit of Finnish due to having a Finnish roommate in university. I've long dreamed of moving to several EU nations, but every one of the countries I could see myself living in makes it so hard to get a visa. I'm more used to American immigration policy, which is a lot more "open door" than the EU countries I adore.
From the little time I've spent in Finland though, I've seen a lot of this type of attitude. People are generally happy to see visitors as long as the visitors don't try to speak their language or talk about moving to the country. Tallinn seems like a nice place, though.
«American immigration policy, which is a lot more "open door"»
I do not now about that. My impression is that American immigration is just more promoted (and exploited) than in other countries, not necessarily easier or more open. It is like an industry on itself. Other countries are not that eager to sell themselves to immigrants, which I guess it's because the general feeling about what already belongs to locals and is not to be sold.
That's a bit overwrought. A country is not "dying" because its population has declined for two decades. You can't extrapolate that trend all the way to the x axis.
The population in Estonia is less than 1.3 million, and without a policy change (or some major regional changes, eg war), it is hard to see how the decline will be reversed. Most of the young people here I know can see no future for themselves in Estonia; being part of the EU makes it too easy to up-and-go to another EU state that pays better.
I used the 'dying' comparison as it's an emotional issue for me, as a 'new Estonian'. I hope very much that my pessimistic extrapolation will prove to be incorrect.
I'm in Finland now, going back down to Estonia. I'd like to meet an Estonian developer - I'm quite curious about the tech scene there. You don't have an email address but mine is hn at stroyvale.com . Please write me.
I think that is actually a huge factor, and one of the key obvious things that the OP overlooked. Latvia (and I suspect the whole Baltic region) was at an artificially inflated population peak when the Soviet Union collapsed. It was one of the most economically prosperous areas of the Soviet Union, and had huge Soviet military bases. Retirement on the Baltic coast was the dream for military brass as well as many other Soviets in the 80s. Additionally, the freedom movements and greater autonomy in the second half of the 80s may have attracted others from other Soviet Republics.
Since independence, and particularly recently, Russians (who once made up over half of Latvia's population) have left, and in many cases not been welcome to stay. One of the major tensions in Latvian politics today is the status of Russian Latvians.
With that backdrop (and given the other factors, such as migration to the rest of the EU) it isn't really that surprising that population levels are returning to that of the 60's.
They are the main component of the population loss. In 1989, the last census while in the USSR, the Baltics held a population of 1.7M ethnic Russians. After regaining independence, Estonia and Latvia denied citizenship to all post-1940 Russian immigrants (and their families). Today, only a million ethnic Russians remain. Some have been naturalized, but a lot have simply bailed, because the national populations are quite hostile to them.
It didn't happen and it does not contribute to the picture at all. People emigrated to the west (mostly Great Britain, Ireland and Spain), including the Russian speaking part.
The jump in the graph happened when the most recent economic crisis hit Baltic countries and drove their GDP roughly 20% down in a year.
Interestingly, according to http://im.kommersant.ru/ISSUES.PHOTO/CORP/2013/02/21/dsryu4...., the Baltics combined have the largest russian diaspora in the world, followed by USA, Germany and Israel. Probably due to the proximity and relative ease of emigration from Russia to the Baltic states.
If you read russian, here is a series of articles with advice on various emigration destinations. It's an interesting view into the current mindset there. http://www.kommersant.ru/doc/2132694
There are countries that are not considered in that report, and some of them are big, with a major quota of Russian population (like Ukraine). That's probably because Russians don't have a diaspora there (and as far as I know people usually are considering a diaspora when they feel themselves outsiders in some way).
The Black Death or Detroit. I don't know which is worse.
I keed, I keed: many very smart people are doing really interesting things in Detroit. It's interesting to note, though, the difference between extrinsic and intrinsic causal factors: the Black Death significantly increased real peasant wages and per capita wealth, likely helping the transition from a feudal to capitalist society through dispersing capital more widely. It's a much better situation (for the people who remain) than the Detroit case, where it was low returns to labor that depopulated it.
Estonia is much closer to the Detroit case, it sounds like, which is not necessarily a good thing for its future prospects.
I'm certain there are other historical mass migrations of such enormous magnitude, but my point was really to glibly provide perspective for such a massive population decrease.
I would assume many/most of those emigrated people are in Scandinavia. It is a bit smaller step than moving to USA in the 19th century... (And much easier to move back, when the economy allows it.)
A more relevant parallel might be many internal moves in big countries to industrial areas, when industrialisation started.
It is not correct to compare population of Russia and Baltic countries. They border each other, but live in completely different economic spaces.
No doubts that author, who position himself as Russia watcher, is familiar with the demography in russian regions bordering with baltic states. Depopulation there is the same if not more severe that in Latvia or Estonia, yet author just 'forget' to mention that little detail.
Some of the hype about Russian population decline is overblown. Whereas people under communism formed families young, now careers take longer to establish and people tend to have kids older just as in the west. This transition contributed to a period of suppressed birth rates, but births are increasing now.
There are already local "franchises" of the large companies like Tietonator and Accenture. The computer science department of the Latvian University, which provides free government funded education in computer science is basically controlled by stock holders of such large offshoring companies. The problem is - the country is very small. About 2 million people. So even taking into account the free education, the absolute number of competent programmers will be quite small. It is already a challenge to find employees for basic web development positions.
I can't say anything for the Baltic region; however, I'm currently in the Balkans. If you can connect American customers with offshore developers, there would be money to be had.
I'm currently working with some web devs and their previous work and the tools they use exemplifies their skills.
the same is happening in many other countries where salaries are a third of (relatively) nearby countries and people are free to move. I don't expect the population decline in the Baltics to continue at that pace though
I have lived with three or four Latvians. Two of them said that they moved from Latvia because, while they could get work there, they couldn't really get by on the wages offered by those jobs.
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Someone has already raised the question of ethnic Russians and other non-Baltic origin leaving these countries. This section of the population actually have a very strong incentive to leave - they are considered non-citizen and have none of the EU privileges[1].
According to the same Wikipedia article, Latvia alone started out with 715k non-citizen in 1991, and now has 290,660 as of March 2011 census. Some left, some died and some became citizen, but the drop is huge and the outflow is intentional with the aim of increasing the proportion of "native" ethnic groups.
At the same time, Russia has been taking in immigrants. The 1 million drop does not show the changes in underlying ethnic proportions. Russian politicians have not been as concerned with maintaining the ethnic composition, which they may start to look at as the riots fueled by ethnic tensions have become much more common.
In any case, pure economic speculations don't do justice to that region. It's a very complex balancing act, with nationalists on both sides willing to chop of their nose to spite their face.
[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Non-citizens_(Latvia)