Demographic crisis suffocates Armenia
By Mushvig Mehdiyev
Armenia is watching a sharp decrease in the natural growth of population, as the growth rate has dropped by 4.5 times in the country since 1990s.
"The current population statistics promise a cut of the country's population by half until 2030," an official health representative said on September 12.
Head of the Health Ministry's Maternity and Reproductive Health Department Gayane Avagyan expressed her concerns over such a tendency saying it poses a demographic threat.
"This is really a challenge everybody has to pay attention to," she said, stressing a demographic surge observed in neighboring countries.
Avagyan noted that Armenia also suffers from tenfold increase of the abortions.
She underlined the alarming increase of the infertility rate in Armenia which doubled in the past ten years.
The United Nations Population Fund's (UNFPA) Armenian Office Head, Garik Hayrapetyan, said earlier in July that the situation in Armenia was characterized by a lower birth rate and aging society. The average number of children in Armenian families is two.
Surging emigration fuels the terrific demographic condition in Armenia. According to official statistics, 80,000 people left the country in 2013 compared to 49,600 in 2012.
Demographic crisis is quite obvious in the regions, as most residents leave the country in search of jobs. That contributes the decrease of the birth rate in the regions. For instance, there is not enough children in Arevis village of Syunik region to attend school. Now this school teaches only three children, who represent one and the same family.
According to the data posted by Index Mundi, the source which contains detailed country statistics, charts, and maps, the population growth in Armenia shows -0.13 percent rate which excludes any growth in number of the people in the country. The source presents the birth rate in Armenia 13.92 per 1,000 people, while death rate 9.5 per 1,000 people. It claims that emigration rate in Armenia is -5.88 per 1,000 people and confirms the disastrous emigration trend in the post-Soviet state.