between January-March, 16,600 fewer than January-March 2021. There were twice as many deaths as there were births, deaths were 584,700 people. The birth rate was 8.9 new babies per 100,000 inhabitants, the lowest crude birth rate since the year 2000. Russia has one of the lowest fertility rates in the world with 1.58 children per woman in 2021, below 2.1 children per woman, which must be the number reached in order to maintain its population. As a result of their low fertility for decades, the Russian population is one of the oldest in the world with an average of 40.3 years. Historical fertility rates The total fertility rate is the number of children born to each woman. It is based on fairly good data for the entire period. Sources: Our World In Data and Gapminder Foundation. In many of the following years, Russia had the highest total fertility rate in the world. These elevated fertility rates did not lead to population growth due to the casualties of the Russian Revolution, the two world wars and political killings. Historical crude birth rates Age structure Median age total: 40.7 years. Country comparison to the world: 51st male: 37.6 years female: 43.5 years (2021 est.) Life expectancy total population: 71.54 years for a child born in 2020, decreasing from 73.34 in 2019 male: 66.49 years (2020) female: 76.49 years (2020) Infant mortality rate total: 4.5 deaths/1,000 live births (2020) male: 5.0 deaths/1,000 live births (2020) female: 3.9 deaths/1,000 live births (2020) Vital statistics Before WW2 After WW2 Current vital statistics All numbers for the Russian Federation in this section do not include the Ukrainian regions of Kherson, Zaporizhzhia, Donetsk and Luhansk, which Russia annexed in September 2022 and which are currently partly under Russian military control. The annexation is internationally recognized only by North Korea. Immigration In 2006, in a bid to compensate for the country's demographic decline, the Russian government started simplifying immigration laws. New citizenship rules introduced in April 2014 allowing eligible citizens from former Soviet republics to obtain Russian citizenship, have gained strong interest among Russian-speaking residents of those countries (i.e. Russians, Germans, Belarusians and Ukrainians). There are an estimated four million undocumented immigrants from the ex-Soviet states in Russia. In 2012, the Russian Federal Security Service's Border Service stated there had been an increase in undocumented migration from the Middle East and Southeast Asia (Note that these were Temporary