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%.
