#3 - JRL 7281
One in three Russian children born out of wedlock
ITAR-TASS

Moscow, 7 August: About one-third of Russia's children are born out of
wedlock, Vladimir Zorin, minister for nationality policies, told a news
conference
on Thursday [7 August] .

According to the latest statistics gathered in the course of last year's
population census, 28.3 per cent of children are born of parents who are not
officially married. As he dwelt on the population census results, Zorin
said one of
its main purposes was to clarify the state of family and demographic
structure of the population, which is established not through official
documents, but
people's views.

[passage omitted]