According to Russian government statistics, the country’s population has increased for the first time in some 22 years during the course of the current year. As such, in 2013, over 26 thousand more babies were born in Russia compared to 2012.

Effective 2007, the Russian government has been paying out maternity capital to Russian families giving birth or adopting the second child. The subsidy in 2013 was 409,000 roubles (USD12,335) per child, and is expected to go up to 430,000 roubles (USD12,970) in 2014. As of January 2013, the payment of extra subsidies for the third and subsequent children was extended to 64 regions of Russia.

According to the Deputy Prime Minister of Russia Olga Golodets, since the maternity capital program was put in place, 50 percent of families with one child decided to have two or more children, up 17 percent from the pre-program figure of 33 percent. The Russian state will continue paying the subsidies to families with newborn babies notwithstanding any budgetary shortfalls. The program is scheduled to be phased out by 2016.

Anton Siluanov, Russia’s Minister of Finance has suggested replacing the maternity capital payment with substantial non-monetary benefits past 2016, as the termination of the widely popular program is expected to generate resentment among the public.

According to Maxim Topilin, the Russian Minister of Labor and Social Security, the institution of the incentive program for the third child allowed increasing the number of newborn children by 10 percent in Russia’s regions where demographic problems were particularly acute. In I the following three years, federal support for Russia’s maternity program is expected to increase. Next year, the national government will provide outlays of 10 billion roubles for maternity capital applicants. In 2015 and 2016, the level of funding will rise to RUR15.8 million for each of the years.

Nearly a year ago, the Russian parliament passed the Dima Yakovlev law that prohibited American citizens from adopting Russian children and focused the national debate on the problem of orphaned children. According to Deputy Prime Minister Golodets, the situation with orphan adoptions in Russia changed for the better after the enactment of the Dima Yakovlev law. As such, when the measure was signed into law, the number of orphaned children in the government adoption database stood at 118,000. That figure has since gone down to 106,900. Of the 259 children that were up for adoption by American citizens, 184 found foster families in Russia.

Another social development that government officials credit as partly responsible for boosting the birth rates are that new kindergarten facilities opened up across the country enough to accommodate 361,000 children.

Non-government analysts offer a more nuanced evaluation of the effect of the maternity capital program in boosting Russia’s birth dynamics. According to Vladimir Arkhangelsky, the head of the Center for Demographic Problems at the Moscow State University, the birth rate is on the rise as a consequence of the government’s overall demographic policy, only one component of which is the maternity capital incentive. Maternity capital has been primarily successful in rural districts.

According to Natalia Zvereva, the chair of Population Studies at the Economics Department of the Moscow State University, 58 percent of women and 56 percent of men in families giving birth to children reported in a survey that their choice to have a child did not depend on state support measures. The survey actually suggested only six percent of the population based their child-bearing decisions on the availability of government support. In Ms. Zvereva’s view, population growth in Russia is temporary. She attributes the upward population dynamic to immigration. Moreover, as Anatoly Vishnevsky of the Demographics Institute at the Higher School of Economics has said, the annual population increase of only 11,700 people is low for such a big country as Russia.

At the same time, population growth, however small it may be, is much better than population decline. The results observed in 2013 are a promising sign of population increases in the years to come.