ArmInfo. Armenia today faces a very serious challenge in the field of demography. This was stated in an interview with the country's Public Television by the head of the consulting company "Ameria" Tigran Jrbashyan, under whose leadership the Strategy for Improving the Demographic Situation for 2024-2040 was developed.
According to Jrbashyan, the existing problem has not been studied in depth for a long period of time, and the program that is presented concerns every citizen of the country. "There is no group of people or individuals who are not affected by it," the specialist said, adding that the document, the work on which began three years ago, was developed by the Ministry of Labor and Social Affairs of the Republic of Armenia with the funding of the UN Population Fund. The document includes the consequences of the Armenian Genocide of 1915, as well as World War II, industrialization, the Spitak earthquake and the post- Soviet period. All these events are interconnected and will continue to influence subsequent demographic processes.
The expert noted that today the demographic problem in Armenia resembles a "perfect storm". The world is currently experiencing a decline in birth rates, and this stereotype is one of the main problems that must be addressed. "Demographers have an idea that after 2060-2070 the population of the Earth will stop increasing. Armenia is part of these processes, it has crossed the reproduction threshold - 2.1 children per woman, after which there is a decrease in natural population growth. In addition, the increase in life expectancy leads to the aging of the population, which is also a global trend, as a result of which the elderly population begins to predominate in the structure of the country's population. We are talking about people aged 65 and older.
Of no less importance is the migration of the population, which is heading to countries with a higher level of prosperity. According to Jrbashyan, Armenia is one of the countries that has suffered the greatest migration losses: over the past 30 years, they amounted to about 1.1 million people. As a result, in Armenia, on the one hand, there is a decline in the birth rate, on the other hand, there is an outflow of labor resources from the country, as well as a fairly high percentage of representatives of the older generation. "All these phenomena, taken together, lead to the fact that the resource of society, including the state, which will be directed at improving the quality of human capital, becomes limited. As a result, the most important challenge is the likelihood of the formation of such a demographic structure that will reduce the possibility of investing in the development of human capital," the specialist explained.
He noted that the goals of the Strategy include creating conditions that will lead to the development of human capital and a prosperous life for people, and for this purpose the document includes four target areas.
The first, according to the expert, is the implementation of a policy aimed at ensuring that families have children. Armenia still belongs to the category of societies where the number of desired children exceeds their actual number in the family. "Our task is to create such an environment within 7-10 years so that the desired children are born," he said. Among the possible measures, he pointed out the need to provide various assistance to young families wishing to have a child, incentives in matters of family planning, including increasing the interest of employers in hiring pregnant women.
The developers of the strategy propose replacing the institution of paying child benefits with a system of public services, when the state concludes contracts and pays salaries to people caring for a child under 3 years of age, be it parents, grandparents or professional nannies, equating them to civil servants.
The second goal of the strategy, as Jrbashyan noted, affects aspects of preserving life, which implies reforms in many areas - from healthcare to road safety.
The third block concerns the global trend of active aging, which is aimed at the fact that an elderly person can generate added value by being healthy and socially active, and the fourth block focuses on migration flows, which are based on qualitative changes in human capital.
The specialist previously noted that 44 programs and more than 150 events have been developed in the Strategy to implement these four global goals, and, in general, it is planned to invest 2.6 trillion drams over 17 years.
