Georgia (Nation)

Georgia, a country in the Caucasus, was a part of the Soviet Union until it gained independence in 1991. With a population of 4.73 million, it has a female life expectancy of 79.9 years. The birth rate is 10.4 per 1,000, and the infant mortality rate is 18 per 1,000 live births. The 2004 estimated divorce rate was 0.42 divorces per 1,000 marriages.

Traditionally, people married young and had children soon after marriage. Stalin's mother, Ekaterina, was 15 when she wed Vissarion Djugashvili, and was 20 when the future Soviet dictator was born in 1879—her fourth child, the three older children having already died as infants. In Georgian society at the time, few women, and even fewer mothers, had careers. They were involved in looking after the home, bringing up children, preparing meals, and tending the family's vegetable garden. Occasionally some women, such as Stalin's mother, took in laundry to enable them to have a little more money.

During the Communist period from 1917 to 1991, Georgian health services improved dramatically; there was another marked improvement in the 1960s and 1970s, when regional hospitals and clinics were opened in towns and villages. Communist literature of the period highlights these health facilities, midwifery services, and improved work opportunities for women. The Tbilisi State University, established in the Georgian capital in 1918, had a special pediatrics faculty. At the time of the dissolution of the Soviet Union, Georgia had the highest number of doctors per capita within the former Soviet republics, and great efforts have been put into medical care since their independence.

One of the country's important indicators, the fertility rate, has showed a marked decline in recent decades. It has fallen from 2.5 in 1975 to 1.6 in 1999. At the same time, there has been a large increase in the percentage of extramarital births—from 0.2 percent in 1975 to 30.9 percent in 1999, the most dramatic rise in any European country. Part of this has been caused by far less people marrying, rather than a dramatic rise in one-parent families.