The Influence of the Regional Maternity Capital Program on Fertility (Case of Yamal-Nenets Autonomous Okrug)

Abstract

Since 2011 Russian regions began to develop their own maternity capital programs. Initially their funding was small, but gradually some regions significantly modernized their programs, expanding the categories of participants and significantly increasing payments. In particular, in the fall of 2019, the government of the Yamalo-Nenets Autonomous Okrug (YNAO) announced a significant expansion of their regional program. The aim of this study is to test whether the positive birth rate dynamics in the YNAO compared to other regions was associated with the introduction of a relatively more generous maternity capital program. It is particularly noteworthy that the effects of updating the regional maternity capital program were observed in the context of a steady decline in fertility in Russia against the backdrop of growing socio-economic uncertainty, as well as stagnation and decline in real incomes of the population. To identify the direct effect of the regional maternity capital program, a discontinuity regression method was applied to individual data on fertility in the YNAO in 2015–2022. In addition to total fertility, models for different birth orders (for the first, second, third, and fourth and subsequent children) were considered. According to our estimates, the change in the total fertility rate (TFR) for all births amounted to 0.15. No effect was found for the first births, the growth of TFR for the second births amounted to 0.12, for the third births — 0.08. The observed changes were primarily related to the urban population’s fertility. Thus, we conclude that the modernization of the maternity capital program in the YNAO made it possible to slow down at the regional level the negative dynamics of fertility observed at the national level.