The improvement of the economy after the 1998 crisis, coupled with historical demographic peak, resulted in an increase in birth rate, first recorded in 2005. Large cities encountered shortage of kindergarten vacancies earlier, in 2002. Moscow's kindergarten waiting list included 15,000 children; in the much smaller city of Tomsk (population 488,000) it reached 12,000. The city of Moscow instituted specialised "kindergarten commissions" that are tasked with locating empty slots for the children; parents sign their children on the waiting list as soon as they are born. The degree of the problem varies between districts, e.g. Moscow's Fili-Davydkovo District (population 78,000) has lost "all" of its kindergartens (residents have to compete for kindergarten slots elsewhere) while Zelenograd claims to have short queue. Independent authors assert that bribes or "donations" for admission to kindergartens compete in amount with university admissions while authorities refute the accusation.