THE DEVELOPMENT OF THE SMALL FAMILY

The 1960s saw a significant decline in the Soviet birthrate. This stemmed in part from a change in the structure of the population: as a result of the drop in births during the war there were fewer young women than usual entering the most fertile age groups in the early sixties. The main reason for the decline in births during the decade was, however, a general move towards a smaller family size. In rural areas the fall in the birthrate was made more acute by the migration of young people to the cities in the more developed regions of the country. Table 10 shows the change in birthrate in both urban and rural areas between 1960 and 1980.

The gap between urban and rural birthrates narrowed significantly during the 1960s. In the following decade the national birthrate increased slightly, yet by 1980 the rate remained well below that of 1960. National figures, however, concealed a very considerable degree of regional and ethnic variation across the USSR. In 1980, birthrates in the Union republics ranged from fourteen births per thousand people in Latvia to thirty-seven per thousand in Tadzhikistan. The recent increase in the Soviet birthrate has therefore been chiefly due to the growth in population in Central Asia and rural parts of the Caucasus.