Penza, 26 October 2015. PenzaNews. The number of new marriages registered in the Penza region in January-August 2015 has shown decrease by 528 units, or 7.8%, compared to earlier, announced Sergei Shemenev, head of the Penza Statistics Service (Penzastat), during the regional government meeting session held on Monday, October 26.

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According to him, the negative trends in current demographics is a decrease in births (by 359 persons) and an increase in deaths (by 306 persons).

“The positive sides: divorces decreased more than marriages – by 17.7% in total. The decrease in divorces is big – by 751 cases. And, most importantly, over this period of 2015 we saw a sharp decline in newborn deaths before first birthdays. There were 65 such deaths in Q1-Q3 last year, but only 38 this year,” stressed the head of Penzastat.

Presently, there are over 1,350,000 people living in the Penza region, Sergei Shemenev said.

“Our population went down by 5,400 since the year’s beginning, which is 0.4%. For comparison: in 2014 quarter-to-quarter the population decreased by 2,800 people, or 0.2%,” he pointed out.

In addition, the head of Penzastat added that natural population decline over the first nine months of 2015 was calculated at 4,600 persons, compared to 3,800 in 2014.

However, an unbiased picture can be formed only through analysis of a much larger period of time, Sergei Shemenev stressed.

“The natural decline in population of the Penza region went down by 2.6 times since 2000,” he concluded.