If you've read this blog for a while, you know that I'm a big fan of adopting Russia's older children. But a new program in Novosibirsk is pushing older adoption to the limit. According to Russia Today, the Siberian city is testing out a plan to have local families adopt its senior citizens.

Typically, the report says, Russia's elderly would live with their children and grandchildren. But apparently some either have no families to turn to, or their families are not able to care for them. And so the regional administration of Novosibirsk has sought out 137 local families to take senior citizens into their home. It doesn't seem to be an adoption in the sense that we have come to know it, and the report doesn't say what financial benefits there might be in this kind of adoption for the families who do so.

Russia's economic liberalization has not been easy on its older citizens. It has stripped away much of the old Soviet safety net of social benefits, and replaced them with cash payments that sound a lot like our Social Security checks--except that they are much more meager. One of the pensioners in the Russia Today report says she gets just $100 a month. Even if Russia's cost of living is far lower than ours, $100 can't go very far. Some of the biggest protest rallies that have taken place during President Vladimir Putin's term have been by senior citizens, like this one that was the subject of a report in The New York Times three years ago.

The country's demographic crisis has also taken a toll on the elderly. The middle-age children that they might have been expecting to live with have died, many of alcohol-related problems.

Russia Today, for those of you who haven't encountered it before is a 24/7 English-language news channel created by the RIA-Novosti newswire service. It posts stories to its Web site and also uploads video segments to YouTube. I've never found it on any of the cable or satellite TV systems that I have had, but it claims to have nearly 90 million pay TV viewers in Europe, North America and South Africa. You can watch a video on its elder-adoption story here.

Image credit: Kevin Connors at Morguefile.com