The Countries That Are Shrinking
About one in four countries now records more deaths than births
Most countries are still growing. A growing number are not. Roughly one in four countries now has more deaths than births in a typical year, and the list includes some of the world's largest economies.
Who is shrinking, and how fast
These are countries losing population through natural change — births minus deaths, before migration is counted.
| Country | Natural change / year | Fertility rate |
|---|---|---|
| China | about −1.0 million | ~1.0 |
| Japan | about −800,000 | ~1.2 |
| Russia | about −700,000 | ~1.4 |
| Italy | about −300,000 | ~1.2 |
| South Korea | about −120,000 | ~0.75 |
| Ukraine | steep decline | ~1.2 |
Approximate natural change, excluding migration. Live figures for all countries in the population table.
Migration masks it
Several countries with negative natural change still report rising total population, because immigration more than offsets the shortfall. Germany, Canada, Australia, and the United Kingdom all fall into this category to varying degrees.
This distinction is frequently blurred in public debate. A country can have far more deaths than births and still grow — and it can have positive natural change while shrinking, if enough people leave. The two mechanisms are independent, and only one of them can be adjusted quickly by policy.
Why decline is so hard to reverse
Once a population starts shrinking through low fertility, momentum works against recovery. The mechanism is arithmetic:
A generation of few births produces a small cohort of future parents. Even if that smaller cohort has a higher fertility rate than their parents did, fewer potential parents can mean fewer total births. Demographers call this negative population momentum, and it can persist for decades after fertility stabilises.
South Korea is the clearest case. Its fertility rate of roughly 0.75 means each generation is around a third the size of the one before. Even an abrupt return to replacement level would leave the population falling for decades, because the parent cohort has already been shrunk.
What shrinking actually looks like
Population decline is rarely evenly spread. It concentrates:
- Rural areas empty first. Young people leave for cities; those who remain are older. Japan has thousands of effectively abandoned homes, and rural depopulation is a live policy problem across Southern and Eastern Europe.
- Schools close before hospitals. The first visible institutional effect is usually educational, since the youngest cohorts thin first.
- The workforce shrinks before the population does. Working-age population typically peaks a decade or more before total population, so economic effects arrive early.
Is it a crisis?
Worth being even-handed here, because the framing is contested.
The genuine difficulties are real: pension and healthcare systems funded by current workers come under strain, as covered in our piece on population ageing; some regions depopulate to the point where services become unviable; and rapid decline is harder to manage than slow decline.
But smaller populations are not inherently worse off. Per-person income, environmental footprint, and housing availability can all improve. Several shrinking countries remain among the world's wealthiest and highest-ranked on quality of life. The difficulty is the transition — the period where obligations were sized for a larger population than exists — rather than the smaller size itself.
What is not in dispute is the direction. On UN projections, most of the world will be in this position by 2100. See when world population will peak.
Frequently asked questions
Which countries are losing population?
China, Japan, Russia, Italy, South Korea, and Ukraine all record more deaths than births. About one in four countries is now in this position.
Why is population decline hard to reverse?
Negative momentum: a generation of few births produces a small cohort of future parents, so even rising fertility can yield fewer total births for decades.