Russia's population declined 0.39% to 142 million people in 2006

Russia's population declined 0.39% to 142.2 million people in 2006, the country's top statistics body said Monday.

Russia is faced with an acute demographic problem, and the government is implementing a number of programs designed to increase the birth rate and attract more migrants to alleviate the problem.

"The population decrease was due to a natural decline, a drop of 157,000 people in 2006 than in the previous year," the State Statistics Committee said.

A total of 1.4762 million children were born, a 1.3% growth on 2005.

The number of deaths decreased 6% to 2.1657 million and was 50% higher than the number of births (60% higher in 2005).

The number of immigrants moving to Russia increased by 24,300, or 1.3% on the previous year.

The immigration growth was 19.4% higher than in 2005.

The number of those emigrating declined 2.3%.

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