About 1.6 million women had an abortion last year, a fifth of them under the age of 18, and about 1.5 million gave birth, said Vladimir Kulakov, vice president of the Russian Academy of Medical Sciences. “Many more” abortions weren’t reported.

“The appearance of a first child pushes many families into poverty,” Kulakov said today in the government’s official newspaper, Rossiskaya Gazeta. “Potential parents first try to start a career, stand on their feet and so forth.”

The collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991 and the ensuing hyperinflation and depression deprived millions of Russians of their incomes and savings and discouraged couples from having children. By 2000, the number of pensioners in Europe’s most populous country outnumbered children and adolescents for the first time.

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