Epress.am News from Armenia
In 2008, emigrating from Armenia were 22 to 23 thousand people; in 2009, that number was 25,000; and in 2010, it was 29,000, said demographer Ruben Yeganyan, presenting official figures to reporters in the Armenian capital on Monday.
Along with official statistics, Yeganyan also presented figures cited by international organizations, according to which from 2002–2007, 205,000 residents of Armenia left the country and didn’t return.
According to the demographer, those emigrating from Armenia mainly go to Russia since in European countries and in the US, problems with visas arise.
The main reasons for emigration, according to Yeganyan, are unemployment, and in those cases where there is employment, the reason for emigration are low salaries “that don’t allow for decent survival.”
Yeganyan also considered very threatening the fact that a large number of emigrants are 20–25 year-old men “of working reproductive age.”
“As a result, the sex and age composition of our population changes. Less dense is the reproductive population
and the population that is capable of working, distorted is the distribution structure of certain population groups by age and sex, the male-female distribution structure, which is very important in terms of reproduction,” he said.
All this, he said, also has an effect on the declining birth rate.