ARMENIA POPULATION EXPECTED TO BE NO MORE THAN 2 MILLION BY 2050
AzerNews, Azerbaijan
July 12 2013
12 July 2013, 14:58 (GMT+05:00)
By Sabina Idayatova
Armenia’s population will be no more than 2 million people by 2050,
News-Armenia quoted director of the Institute of Philosophy, Sociology
and Law of the Armenian National Academy of Sciences, Gevorg Pogosyan,
as saying on July 10.
According to UN projections, 3 million people instead of the current
3.2 million will live in Armenia by 2050.
“Like many countries in the world, Armenia is characterized by a
tendency of depopulation. This is primarily because of the decline
in the birth rate in the country and strong migration deflux.
UNFPA (United Nations Population Fund) in its predictions takes
into account the trends in fertility and mortality in the country,
however, the migration potential is not taken into account,” Pogosyan
said during the Moscow-Kiev-Chisinau-Yerevan-Astana video link on
demographic situation in CIS countries.
According to the expert, over the past ten years, the birth rate in
Armenia has declined averagely to 35,000 children per year from about
72,000 children at the end of the 1980s.
“In our country, the population is reducing mainly due to outflow.
Thus, annually 35,000 children are born and the same number of people
leave the country,” Pogosyan said.
He noted that there is also a problem of population aging in Armenia,
as 14.6 percent of the population are above 60, while according to
international standards, aging is considered to be 12 percent of the
population being over 60 years old.
Pogosyan added that there is also a problem of urbanization in the
country.
“Armenia is one of the few countries in which 35 percent of the
population lives in the capital. Therefore, there is depopulation of
rural areas, which also affects the demographic picture,” Pogosyan
said.
The expert said that in order to change the current demographic
situation in the country it is necessary to halt the migration
outflow and increase the birth rate through various programs and
benefits packages as well as to make an effort to return citizens
living abroad to their homeland.
In the last three years 5 percent or about 160,000 Armenian citizens
left the country, according to Armenian Report portal.
According to the Armenian Migration Service, 2.053 million people left
the country over 11 months of 2012, while 1.981 million people returned
in this period. Thus, the difference between those who left and came
back made up about 72,000 people, Haykakan Zhamanak daily said.
In January-February 2013, the number of emigrants increased by 2,455
compared to the same period of 2012.
The tendency of an exodus emerged in 2008, and about 200,000 people
have left the country since then in search of a new start in their
lives.
Given Armenia’s small population of slightly over 3 million, if
the dangerous demographic situation in the South Caucasus republic
persists, it may soon have almost no labor force left. Around
two-thirds of the migrants have reportedly gone to Russia, while the
rest have moved to the U.S. or Europe.
The most intensive migration has been reported to the central and
southern regions of Russia, as well as to the other Commonwealth of
Independent States (CIS) countries. At least 40,000 people have left
for the United States and other industrialized countries.
About 60 percent of the entire total of 8 million Armenians live
outside Armenia in 60 countries, with one million in the U.S. and
Russia each. There are also large Armenian communities in Georgia,
France, Iran, Lebanon, Syria, Argentina, and Canada.
The Armenian government, however, appears to lack an intention to
change the situation for the sake of its people by leaving the country
sidelined from regional projects because of the invasion policy against
Azerbaijan, occupying the country’s Nagorno-Karabakh and seven other
regions, and fueling tension with neighboring countries.