Changing Public and Political Discourse as a Response to Reducing Fertility

. In the past 25 years, the Presidential Addresses to the Federal Assembly are seen as the foundation of generalised strategies for the development of social communities and institutions in the socio-political discourse of the Russian Federation. Vectors of strategic development, indicated in the Addresses, transform into strategies for individual spheres of public life, government programme documents, and national projects. The main directions for the development of pronatalist policy and family institutions can also be found in the Presidential Address to the Federal Assembly. The paper presents the results of a quantitative content analysis of the Presidential Addresses to the Federal Assembly with elements of discourse analysis. Examined semantic units are the birth rates increase, children’s human capital development, and measures to support families. The findings demonstrate how much attention was devoted to the demographic problems at different times, and whether there is a correlation between these data and statistical indicators of the birth rate.