Maternity Capital — Russia's Cash-for-Births Policy and Its Gender-Equality Blind Spot

Since 2007, the Russian government has paid a lump-sum 'maternity capital' benefit to mothers on the birth of a second child (extended to first children from 2020). The benefit has grown steadily - reaching roughly 737,204 rubles for a first child from February 2026 - and is administered by what was the Pension Fund of Russia and, since a 2023 merger, is the Social Fund of Russia. The programme has been extended through 2030.
The clearest independent evidence comes from Slonimczyk and Yurko (2014, Labour Economics), who estimate a structural dynamic model of fertility and employment on Russian Longitudinal Monitoring Survey data and find the policy raised long-run fertility by about 0.15 children per woman.
Feminist and demographic scholarship complicates the equality story. Rivkin-Fish's analysis in Slavic Review argues the policy channels support through mothers as primary caregivers and does not challenge the gendered division of paid and unpaid labour; other researchers link it to Russian women's persistent 'double burden' of full-time work plus disproportionate domestic and care responsibilities.
This entry is included as a well-evidenced cautionary case: a durable, rigorously studied, politically popular family policy that meaningfully changed fertility behaviour but - on the evidence available - did not advance gender equality in the workplace or the home, illustrating why family policy needs explicit gender-mainstreaming to count as a gender-equality practice.

Read the full analysis: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0927537114000232