The Baltic Demographic Disaster
forbes.com
forbes.com
Someone has already raised the question of ethnic Russians and other non-Baltic origin leaving these countries. This section of the population actually have a very strong incentive to leave - they are considered non-citizen and have none of the EU privileges[1].
According to the same Wikipedia article, Latvia alone started out with 715k non-citizen in 1991, and now has 290,660 as of March 2011 census. Some left, some died and some became citizen, but the drop is huge and the outflow is intentional with the aim of increasing the proportion of "native" ethnic groups.
At the same time, Russia has been taking in immigrants. The 1 million drop does not show the changes in underlying ethnic proportions. Russian politicians have not been as concerned with maintaining the ethnic composition, which they may start to look at as the riots fueled by ethnic tensions have become much more common.
In any case, pure economic speculations don't do justice to that region. It's a very complex balancing act, with nationalists on both sides willing to chop of their nose to spite their face.
You seem to imply that there are already "riots fueled by ethnic tensions", care to point to an example?
(UPI is a fairly major Western news agency. Not as big as the AP, but a long way from being a Livejournal poster.)
Also claiming that they have an incentive to leave the country seems wrong, because the requirements to acquire citizenship are so easy. You just have to prove that you understand the Latvian language at a very basic level. If you can do that, then you get citizenship. Much easier than moving to a different country.
In any case, you have a point that if someone WANTED to integrate into Latvian society, they could. What I'm questioning is the desire.
Having immigrated to US and adapted to that society, I'd have to say that moving "back" to the country where you already speak the language and identify with the society is quite a bit easier than to fully integrate into something you are not used to. It's all in the will of a person and the economic incentives to do so. For me in the US, I had the resolve and very strong financial against to be had if I followed through.
If you take Switzerland as an example, their extremely high citizenship requirements are well supported by the high standard of living and long term benefits. Unfortunately, Latvia, together with the rest of the Baltic states does not yet have such a strong position. I suspect when it does, such complaints will end, as people will be happy to do the work for the reward.
I don't know about that, ever been to Narva? Ethnic Russians are, at least to some extent, in a position similar to that of African Americans in the US, but it is easier for them to leave since they just arrived a few decades ago, whereas African Americans have been in the US long enough to have established long-term connections and to have lost contact with the "old world". So it seems pretty reasonable to me to say that Ethnic Russians have an incentive to leave the Baltic states.
Narva is a huge problem for the Estonian government - unemployment there is high, and the educational institutions struggle to field teachers who can teach in Estonian. As a result, young people with a Russian background are at a disadvantage with respect to basic language skills.
It's also fair to say there are a number of those in Narva who wish for their 'countrymen' to come rolling over the border again.
The author's thesis could be summarized as: The Baltic population level has declined consistently since 1992, therefore Baltic economic policies must not be as desirable as some make them out to be.
Population migration and economic policy are two astoundingly broad topics. Any attempt to link the two requires at least some analysis of each. This article contains none.
Flagged.
"Don't ignore population growth/decline when examining economic reform."
Ok, but what of it? Is anyone ignoring that? If the author believes that the population decline in the Baltics is due to the economic policy therein, then they should find ways to establish that causal relationship, not just point at a graph and say "see here".
Yes, just about every article that uses the Baltic countries as an economic example to emulate fails to mention this bit.
Is it ethnic Russians leaving these countries?
Why the sudden drop in one year, which seems to represent a change of definitions?
The sudden drop in one year, as the article points out, was likely because of the economic crisis. As for whether it's ethnic Russians leaving the country, it's not obvious to me why that is the first thing that matters; most discussions on population and economics don't immediately leap to ethnicity, do they?
There's also the question of whether the outflow does in fact consist mostly of Russians. Is there data on this? No one has presented any here, and the various comments in the thread contradict one another.
That seems to be the case. This is from the same source as these population figures (Eurostat):
http://epp.eurostat.ec.europa.eu/statistics_explained/index....
In footnote (3) it says emigration figures for Lithuania -- the largest of the Baltics -- are overstated in 2010 and 2011. Those years include emigrants who had left in previous years but hadn't been counted.
If I wanted to immigrate to, say, Estonia next year, how difficult would it be?
Additionally, other posters have been right about ethnic Russians leaving the Baltics, which is something governments have actually been trying to encourage anyhow. The Soviets had hugely increased the number of ethnic Russians in the Baltics, nearly to the point of overtaking the native populations.
Wikipedia has a partial graph for Latvia: http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/b/b1/Ethnic_gr...
> The Soviets had hugely increased the number of ethnic
> Russians in the Baltics
I'm half Australian and half Estonian - and have citizenship of both countries. I've worked as a developer in both countries, and currently reside (and work) in Estonia. I see this attitude all the time in Estonia; despite the obvious need for immigration, many people would rather see the population keep on decreasing. Currently it's simply too difficult for professionals to get an Estonian visa, and wages are not attractive enough, in general, to attract those with an EU passport. This is part of the problem that will, in time, kill Estonia and likely the other Baltic countries.
From the little time I've spent in Finland though, I've seen a lot of this type of attitude. People are generally happy to see visitors as long as the visitors don't try to speak their language or talk about moving to the country. Tallinn seems like a nice place, though.
I do not now about that. My impression is that American immigration is just more promoted (and exploited) than in other countries, not necessarily easier or more open. It is like an industry on itself. Other countries are not that eager to sell themselves to immigrants, which I guess it's because the general feeling about what already belongs to locals and is not to be sold.
I used the 'dying' comparison as it's an emotional issue for me, as a 'new Estonian'. I hope very much that my pessimistic extrapolation will prove to be incorrect.
If you read russian, here is a series of articles with advice on various emigration destinations. It's an interesting view into the current mindset there. http://www.kommersant.ru/doc/2132694
The jump in the graph happened when the most recent economic crisis hit Baltic countries and drove their GDP roughly 20% down in a year.
Since independence, and particularly recently, Russians (who once made up over half of Latvia's population) have left, and in many cases not been welcome to stay. One of the major tensions in Latvian politics today is the status of Russian Latvians.
With that backdrop (and given the other factors, such as migration to the rest of the EU) it isn't really that surprising that population levels are returning to that of the 60's.
I don't think it's completely unprecedented, but I doubt that people will take heart in being compared favorably to the Black Death.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Famine_%28Ireland%29
I'm certain there are other historical mass migrations of such enormous magnitude, but my point was really to glibly provide perspective for such a massive population decrease.
A more relevant parallel might be many internal moves in big countries to industrial areas, when industrialisation started.
Granted, the population is smaller than the Baltic states, but the population of the Baltic states is also smaller than that of Russia.
[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographic_history_of_Detroit
I keed, I keed: many very smart people are doing really interesting things in Detroit. It's interesting to note, though, the difference between extrinsic and intrinsic causal factors: the Black Death significantly increased real peasant wages and per capita wealth, likely helping the transition from a feudal to capitalist society through dispersing capital more widely. It's a much better situation (for the people who remain) than the Detroit case, where it was low returns to labor that depopulated it.
Estonia is much closer to the Detroit case, it sounds like, which is not necessarily a good thing for its future prospects.
No doubts that author, who position himself as Russia watcher, is familiar with the demography in russian regions bordering with baltic states. Depopulation there is the same if not more severe that in Latvia or Estonia, yet author just 'forget' to mention that little detail.
I'm currently working with some web devs and their previous work and the tools they use exemplifies their skills.