Adjusting for Adjustment: The Impacts of Internal Migrant Assimilation, Adaptation, Disruption and Selection in a Context of Regional Variation, The Case of Russia

Ashton M Verdery, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill

Russia’s population has declined by at least four million people since the early 1990s; however, this has not occurred uniformly across the country. The regions of the country with the greatest natural decrease have also experienced the highest rates of out-migration, while regions with more stable rates of natural increase have experienced in-migration. Some methods of population projection account for migration in their metrics of change, but they ignore its potential impact in altering fertility and mortality patterns. This paper will project population change in Russia and incorporate the net interchange between sub-national regions of the country to explore the consequences of four models of migrant fertility schedule and completed fertility adjustment - assimilation, adaptation, disruption, and selectivity - on the country’s population potential. Results suggest that internal migration and migrants’ fertility adjustments may play a significant role in determining growth trajectory, particularly under assumptions of medium- to high- fertility.