I. Metshin: “Population in our city is growing, so we are optimistic about the future”

(KZN.RU, January 21, Ksenia Shvetsova). Last year, 21023 children were born in the capital of Tatarstan. The number of registered births in Kazan is 37% higher than the number of deaths. According to these rates, the capital of Tatarstan is ahead of many large Russian cities. Rimma Minnullina, the head of the Registry Office, told at the Business Monday how the demographic situation in Kazan has changed, in what age Kazan citizens create a family and how often they file for divorce.

A couple of decades ago, the birth rate was low in the capital of Tatarstan, as in most Russian cities. From 1994 to 1998, no more than 10 thousand babies were born annually in the city. 20 years ago, a historic minimum birth rate was recorded: fewer than 9 thousand children were born in 1999 and 2000. However, since the early 2000s, the birth rate began to rise, and since 2010, Kazan has set demographic maximums for seven years.

After many years of growth, last year the birth rate fell by 4%, due to objective reasons. “Now parents are mostly representatives of the small generation of the 90s. That is why for the last two years we have witnessed a slight drop in the birth rate in the city”, explained Rimma Minnullina. She added that even with this decline, 2.3 times more children are born today in the capital of Tatarstan than it was in 2000. This is explained by the fact that over the past few years, the structure of births is changing. Now more and more often families bring up second and more children, whereas before, the absolute majority of babies born into the world were first children. For example, last year 44% of newborns were first-born children, 56% were second and subsequent children.

Last year, twins appeared in 305 families, triplets were born in 7 families. As in previous years, more boys were born than girls (10865 boys, 10158 girls).

R. Minnullina also spoke about the most popular and unusual names that parents gave to their children. Thus, the three most common male names since 2013 haven’t changed: Amir, Karim, and Timur. Among the girls, the top three are Sophia, Yasmina, and Amina. The most interesting names of children who were registered in 2018 are Aaron, Lazar, Tomislav, Polza, Sevara, Galiyabanu.

In 2018, 13203 death certificates were registered. This is one of the lowest death rates in the last 25 years. At the same time, almost half of the death acts are registered for citizens over 75 years old.

In general, the number of registered births in Kazan is 37% higher than the number of registered deaths. The capital of Tatarstan has the best rates among million-plus cities of the Volga Federal District, such as Ufa, Nizhny Novgorod, Perm, and Samara, noted R. Minnullina. “Kazan has been an actively growing city since 2009”, she added.

Demographic data objectively reflects the social and economic processes that took place in the mid-1990s, noted Ilsur Metshin, the Mayor of Kazan. He emphasized three important trends in the current demographic situation. “First of all, it is important that having overcome the bar of 20 thousand births, we no longer reduce it. Second of all, many families have a second and third child, and already last year 15% of children were born in large families. And especially it should be noted that the birth and death rates in Kazan are in favor of births, which are 37% more. This suggests that we are the city with the growing population, so we are optimistic about the future”.

The head of the city also added that the high birth rate makes it necessary to constantly continue to work on the development of social infrastructure. He noted that republican and federal programs for the construction of kindergartens and schools play a big role in this. “In addition to inspiration, these results oblige us to carefully predict the situation and the development of social infrastructure. Thanks to the support of the President of the RT and colleagues from the government, we are successfully solving the issues of building kindergartens, schools, and clinics. The amount of first-graders is great this year, we will continue to work”, said I. Metshin.

According to the federal target program “Zhilische” in “Svetlaya Dolina”, a kindergarten for 340 children is being built, and one for 220 children – in the residential complex “Yubileinaya Station” (Sportivnaya).

Last year, 10477 couples entered into a marriage, which is 7.9% less than in 2017, said the head of the Registry Office. However, this figure is 2 times higher than in 1998, when only 5387 marriages were registered.

The most active period of marriage is the age from 25 to 34 years. However, there are exceptions: the most elder groom, who registered the marriage last year, was 81 years old, and the bride was 77 years old.

“Creating a family is easy, it is hard to keep it”, said the speaker. “In 2018, 4788 divorce acts were registered. This is 157 acts more than in 2017”. Last year, traditionally, 33% of divorces fell on young families, whose family life experience was up to 5 years. Note that the rate at the end of 2017 was slightly higher – 39%.

However, if over the past 20 years the number of annually registered marriages has doubled, then the rate of divorces remains almost haven’t changed, said R. Minnullina emphasized. For comparison, in 2002 the number of marriages and divorces in Kazan was almost the same, and now the number of divorces is half the number of marriages. “Comparing the marriage-divorce ratio of million-plus cities, it could be noted that Kazan has the best rat here, too”, said the speaker.

For several years already, the project “Save the Family” has been implemented in Kazan, under which the Civil Registry Office organizes appointments with the psychologist on a grant basis to provide mediation assistance. Thus, by the end of 2018, 284 couples went through mediation, 110 couples came to a reconciliation, of which 64 couples took away the previously filed application for divorce, 46 couples changed their minds to dissolve the marriage and decided to keep the family.

To strengthen the family institution, more than 200 events were held last year aimed at preserving family values and traditions. For example, 111 classes and individual consultations were held; more than 3 thousand people took part in them.

More than a thousand families have been congratulated on the anniversary of their married life. 3 families celebrated their 70th anniversary (the “blessed”), 187 families celebrated their 60th anniversary (the “brilliant”), and 812 families celebrated the 50th anniversary (the “golden”).

At the end of the report, R. Minnullina added that from October 1, employees of Kazan Civil Registry Office create a unified database of civil status records in the Unified State Registry of Civil Registry Offices. This will allow citizens applying to the registry offices to reduce the time to receive documents from any region of the country.