They do allow pseudonymous answers, so in most cases people can answer without fear of reprisal.

The anonymity was meant to be absolutely secure against that -- not even a warrant could break anonymity. But it made it impossible to moderate the site, because there was a ton of persistent trolling and neither the administrators nor self-moderation tools were of any use.

So this does remove a narrow use case of, say, whistleblowing or reporting from war zone. But I'll be blunt that I saw zero uses of that, and a ton of abuse.

You're right that it won't shift demographics. As I wrote in a separate comment the anonymous answers were less used for abuse than anonymous questions. I suspect it's more about software maintenance, ceasing to maintain a use case that has little value and much headache.