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Originally Posted by PoshSteve
You're absolutely correct. I don't see any future where Russia's population in 2050 is larger than it is now - barring being over run by climate refugees or something else extreme and unlikely. I just use Russia as an example that these types of predictions need to be taken with a huge grain of salt, as any small change now can have huge effects down the road. No one making the predictions in the 90s/00s saw the country reversing the decline and growing over the last ten years. The predictions were births would remain low and deaths would remain high, which is not what happened.
What is really of interest to me is how the demographics of Russia diverged with the other eastern European countries over the last 20 years. Russia wasn't the only country with pro-natalist policies, nor was it the country with the best increase in standard of living or economic growth. Yet it was the only country to see population growth.
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Indeed Russian rebound was unexpected and hasn't been reproduced elsewhere even in neighbouring places (Belarus, Ukraine, Poland). I guess being a big country, with two big and dynamic metropolises might have helped, I don't know.
It's an unique case, like Argentina with its very stable (and rather high) fertility rate over the past five decades.