Comments by "LancesArmorStriking" (@LancesArmorStriking) on "The Booming Demographics of Kazakhstan" video.

  1. ​ @traumvonhaiti  This does not explain the Kazakh trend, since we would expect this to also be true in Ukraine and especially the Baltics (who are extremely anti-Russian). Yet Ukraine stagnated and the Baltics population has plummeted. They have they same history and (it is assumed) psychology, and yet they have very different demographics. I think the actual reason is much simpler: their geography. They are landlocked, which means moving to somewhere better is much harder to do. Russians wanting to leave can just sneak across to the EU, but Kazakhs would need to go through Russia. This makes the percent of people leaving lower because the barrier is higher. So people stay, and there is never a sense of loss to create the sense of stagnation that Ukraine or the Baltics have.
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  2.  @traumvonhaiti  "It doesn't work like that" —like what? I didn't describe why Kazakh demographics is working. I just said that others in a similar situation aren't working so well. You said that the Kazakh national character encoursges having children to survive under foreign occupation. But that is true of many other post-Soviet countries, so that cannot be why Kazakhs have more kids, because we would see that in other places too. Kazkah culture is not nomadic anymore, and Ukraine (until the 1990s Westernization) was collectivist too. It goes without saying that it is also survivalist. So again why don't we see them be similar to Kazkahs? If we use your scenario, I would say it is a mix of things: Mostly their cultural values. Westerners aren't willing to sacrifice their early 20s to having children and (because they industrialized so early) their family structure is broken, so there is no opportunity for them to have grandparents help take care of the kids under the same household. In addition to valuing personal freedom, they also value privacy. Most want a separate home so that marital relations can be done in private. To a smaller extent, economic conditions. In the farms it is easier to put a child to work and they can actually make money, but in the cities raising a child is hard, without that grandparents support. Children in the city cost money and most people can't even afford to rent a small flat, so nobody has kids.
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