.Russia is struggling with a population decline, and because of this governmental officials seem to be brainstorming ways to encourage people to have more children.

Hmm. Maybe they're not having children because the majority of them are very poor?

I probably shouldn't say anything as I don't know the whole picture, but it seems to me that paying people to have children, or in the case of this most recent suggestion by the Russian Health and Social Development minister Mikhail Zurabov, that people who don't have children be taxed for their lack of commitment to population growth, is probably not going to solve the problem of low population growth AND may result in more children entering the orphanages than are there now.

This Moscow News article, "Russia Mulls Childless Tax to Encourage More Births", reports:

Speaking to the press after a seminar that focused on low birth rates in Russia health and social development minister Mikhail Zurabov suggested that childless taxpayers should help the state support families with children and thus at least partially assume the cost of encouraging more births.

Deputy chief of the lower house health committee, Nikolai Gerasimenko, backed the idea saying that nearly 21 million Russians are single and said that the lower house was working on a bill to the effect. None of the officials would elaborate on the size of the tax.

Meanwhile,

...experts see no reason to believe that sanctions against the childless will do much to raise the birthrate. Germany, for instance, already spends more than any other country on family subsidies, and has the world’s second-highest taxes on childless singles (after Belgium).

We get tax cuts here for having children. I suppose you could consider this a tax against people with no children...but for some reason it seems different. Am I wrong about this? Is this fuzzy math? What do you think the results of this kind of government intervention will be? Population growth or more unwanted children? Who cares if they're wanted or not as long as they count in the census?

Hmm.