Paper Title
Demographic Situation in Kazakhstan Regional Disparities in Demographic Development and Fertility Rates

Abstract
While the European former Soviet Republics had already undergone their demographic transitions before the USSR breakup, Central Asian countries still exhibits demographic traits akin to those of developing nations. With its high fertility rates and youthful population structure, Central Asia holds considerable potential for sustained population growth in the long term (Haub, 1994). And Kazakhstan, as a leader among Central Asian countries in terms of economic growth, ranks 63rd in the world in terms of population and third among the CIS countries after the Russian Federation and Uzbekistan. Despite demographic growth, the average population density in Kazakhstan at the beginning of 2022 is 7.2 people per km² (183rd place in the list of countries by population density). Moreover, with the beginning of the transformation processes of the former USSR and the expansion of the possibility of the return of certain ethnic groups to their historical homeland in 1991, significant changes occurred in the size and ethnic composition of the population of Kazakhstan. Implications of these demographic processes were unevenly distributed among regions, and if some regions were able to recover and even increase the population, others are still experiencing depopulation and declining birth rates. Natural decline of population in some regions is conditioned by the fertility level below the replacement level, and by the negative net migration rate. In this study authors study the disparities in demographic development of regions by analyzing birth rate, death rate, population growth rate and migration flows in regions with demographic decline.