Countries With Shrinking Populations

The world's population reached 8.2 billion people in 2024 and is still growing, but the United Nations now expects that growth to peak at around 10.3 billion in the mid-2080s before starting to fall. Some countries have already begun that decline. According to the UN's World Population Prospects 2024 Revision, the global fertility rate has fallen to 2.25 live births per woman, below the 2.1 needed to maintain a population without immigration, and about 71 percent of people now live in countries where fertility has dropped below that replacement level. The five years from 2020 to 2025 reshaped the demographic map in ways that the previous edition of this article (which used 2015 to 2020 data) does not capture. China began shrinking for the first time in six decades. Ukraine lost the largest share of its population of any country on Earth, driven by Russia's 2022 invasion. And several Eastern European countries that had been shrinking for years (Lithuania, Czechia, Estonia) actually grew between 2020 and 2025 because they took in Ukrainian refugees.

The table later in this article uses five-year cumulative population change from 2020 to 2025, calculated from Eurostat 1 January figures for EU members and UN World Population Prospects 2024 Revision data for non-EU countries. This matches the original article's five-year window methodology (which used 2015 to 2020), refreshed with the most recent estimates. Several countries from the previous edition have moved off the list, and a few new ones have entered.

What Causes Populations To Shrink?

A country's population shrinks when births and immigration together fail to keep pace with deaths and emigration. The drivers are usually some combination of low fertility, an aging population, sustained out-migration, war or political instability, and economic stagnation. None of these forces work alone. South Korea and Italy have low fertility but minimal emigration. Ukraine has all four. The Baltic states combined low fertility with large EU-driven emigration after 2004, then partially reversed course when they began receiving Ukrainian refugees in 2022. The mix matters because each driver responds to different policies, and countries usually need to address several at once before the trend changes.

The fertility component is the most widespread and least reversible. Global fertility was 5 children per woman in the 1960s; it is 2.25 today and projected to fall further. South Korea recorded a rate of 0.72 in 2023 and a slight rebound to 0.748 in 2024, the lowest in the world. Seoul's rate alone was 0.55. China's fertility fell to 1.01 in 2024. Japan's was 1.20 in 2023. Italy reported just 370,000 births in 2024, the sixteenth straight year of decline.

Where Populations Are Shrinking And Why

Eastern Europe And The Baltics

The longest-running depopulation story is in Eastern Europe. Many countries that joined the European Union in 2004 and 2007 saw working-age citizens leave for higher wages in Germany, the UK, and Ireland, on top of already-low birth rates and the lingering effects of post-Soviet economic shocks. Over the full quarter-century from 2000 to 2025, six countries lost more than 15 percent of their populations: Bulgaria dropped about 23 percent, Latvia about 22 percent, Moldova about 19 percent, Lithuania about 18 percent, and Romania about 16 percent. Latvia has lost roughly a fifth of its population since EU accession in 2004.

The pattern has not held uniformly through 2024. Lithuania, which led the previous edition of this article with a 5-year decline of nearly 1.5 percent annually, actually grew in 2024 because of immigration from Ukraine and Belarus. Moldova, on the other hand, lost roughly a million people (about 25 percent of its population) between 2020 and 2024 and recorded an annual decline of 1.22 percent in 2024, making it the fastest-shrinking sovereign nation outside the small island states. Czechia and Estonia have now both joined the list of countries with negative annual growth, with 2024 rates of -1.04 percent and -0.98 percent respectively.

Ukraine: A Country In Its Own Category

Ukraine is the single most extreme case of population decline in the world today. Its population peaked above 52 million in 1993, dropped to about 48.7 million by 2000, fell to 43.7 million by 2020, and stood at roughly 32.9 million in 2025, a cumulative 25-year loss of about 32.5 percent. The Russian invasion in February 2022 accelerated a long-running demographic slide. The UN estimates that net out-migration was 5.7 million in 2022 and another 300,000 in 2023. Ukraine's single-year growth rate hit -14.3 percent in 2022, then improved to -2.7 percent in 2023 as some refugees returned. The country's peacetime birth rate (9.2 per 1,000) was already well below its death rate (15.2 per 1,000) before the war, and the war has compounded both sides of that equation.

East Asia: Japan, China, And South Korea

Three of the world's largest economies are now shrinking. Japan's population peaked at about 128 million in 2011 and lost roughly 900,000 people in 2024 alone, the largest single-year drop in its history. Around 29 percent of Japan's residents are now aged 65 or older, the highest share of any country. The major drivers are low fertility (1.20 in 2023, well below replacement) and minimal immigration, though Japan has begun expanding work-visa programs.

China's population fell for the fourth straight year in 2025, dropping by 3.39 million to 1.405 billion. That came on top of declines of 1.39 million in 2024, 2.08 million in 2023, and 850,000 in 2022. China's fertility rate stood at 1.01 in 2024, less than half the replacement level, and the National Bureau of Statistics reported just 7.92 million births in 2025, the lowest annual figure since the founding of the People's Republic in 1949. The UN now projects China will lose 204 million people by 2054, by far the largest absolute population loss expected anywhere on Earth, and could lose as many as 786 million by 2100.

South Korea has the lowest fertility rate ever recorded for a country. Statistics Korea reported a total fertility rate of 0.72 in 2023, with a small uptick to 0.748 in 2024. Seoul's rate of 0.55 is the lowest of any major city. The South Korean population began declining in 2020 and is projected to fall from about 51.7 million today to 36.2 million by 2072, a decline of nearly 30 percent. Despite government spending of more than 360 trillion won (about $260 billion) on pro-natal incentives since 2006, the trajectory has barely moved.

Venezuela

Venezuela's population loss is driven almost entirely by emigration. The United Nations Refugee Agency reported in December 2025 that more than 7.9 million Venezuelans had left the country since 2014, the largest displacement crisis in Latin American history and one of the largest in the world. That total represents roughly 23 percent of the pre-crisis population. About 6.9 million of those migrants live elsewhere in Latin America and the Caribbean, with Colombia hosting the largest share (about 2.9 million). An average of 2,000 people continued to leave the country each day through 2025. Venezuela's economic collapse, contested July 2024 elections, and continued government repression have made return unlikely for most migrants in the near term.

Syria: A Reversal Underway

The previous edition of this article noted that Syria's civil war, which began in 2011, had displaced millions and shrunk the country's population. That picture changed sharply at the end of 2024. The Assad government fell on December 8, 2024, after a swift rebel offensive led by Hay'at Tahrir al-Sham captured Damascus. By the end of 2024 there were still 6.1 million Syrian refugees abroad and another 7.4 million people internally displaced. Since the regime's collapse, more than one million Syrian refugees have returned from Turkey, Lebanon, and Jordan through late 2025, along with roughly 1.8 million internally displaced Syrians moving back to their home areas. The UN expects an additional 1.5 million refugees and 2 million IDPs may return by the end of 2025. The country still faces enormous reconstruction needs, ongoing sectarian violence, and a fragile political transition, but Syria's demographic trajectory has shifted from net loss toward partial recovery for the first time in 14 years.

Southern Europe: Italy, Greece, And Portugal

The Mediterranean economies are aging quickly and shrinking slowly. Italy recorded just 370,000 births in 2024, the lowest annual figure since the country's unification in 1861 and the sixteenth consecutive year of decline. Its population is expected to drop from 59.3 million today to about 51.9 million by 2050. Greece reported the steepest 2024 annual decline among large EU economies, at 1.77 percent, and its population could fall by half over the next 50 years if current trends hold. Portugal's loss is more modest at 0.10 percent annually in 2024, and the country has actively encouraged emigrants to return through tax incentives. Spain's decline is on the edge of statistical significance at 0.02 percent, with substantial immigration partially offsetting low fertility.

The Effects Of Shrinking Populations

A smaller population can ease pressure on housing, infrastructure, and the environment, but the composition of the decline usually determines whether the net effect is positive. In most shrinking countries, the loss is concentrated among working-age adults through emigration, low birth rates, or both, which tilts the age structure further toward retirees. By 2030, the UN expects the global population aged 80 and older to reach 265 million, more than the number of babies under one. By 2070, the number of people aged 65 or older worldwide will exceed the number of people under 18 for the first time in human history. Countries are responding with longer working lives (China raised retirement ages starting January 2025), expanded immigration programs (Japan, South Korea), pronatalist payments and tax incentives (Hungary, South Korea, Portugal), and gradually higher use of automation in sectors facing labor shortages. None of these tools has yet reversed a sustained decline once it sets in.

Twenty Countries With Shrinking Populations (2020 to 2025)

The table below lists 20 sovereign countries with negative population change between 2020 and 2025. EU member figures use Eurostat 1 January estimates; non-EU figures use UN World Population Prospects 2024 Revision data. Cumulative percentage change is rounded to one decimal place.

Several countries that ranked near the top of the previous edition's list have moved off it. Lithuania, which led the 2015-2020 ranking at -1.5 percent per year, actually grew by about 3.5 percent between 2020 and 2025 because of immigration from Ukraine. Czechia and Estonia also grew over the five-year span for similar reasons. China crossed into negative territory partway through the period, posting a small cumulative loss of about 0.3 percent that doesn't make the top 20 by rate but represents an enormous absolute decline of roughly 4 million people. Tuvalu, the Marshall Islands, and several small Caribbean territories had steeper percentage declines than some countries on this list, but they are excluded here either because they are not sovereign countries or because their absolute population is small enough that single-year migration flows distort the rate.

A Demographic Turning Point

The countries on this list span four continents and a wide range of incomes, and no single explanation covers them all. What they share is a population trajectory that, for the first time in modern history, is pointing downward at the same moment in dozens of places at once. The UN now expects 48 countries to have peaked and begun shrinking by 2054, representing about 10 percent of the world's people. Whether that adds up to a global crisis depends on what each country does about its working-age shortfall over the next two or three decades. The data above shows where the shift is fastest. The harder question, which demography alone cannot answer, is what comes next.