The Cuban population has decreased this year, due to migration and a greater number of deaths than births, and maintains its tendency to age, when it has already reached 24.4% of people aged 60 or older, according to a government report presented this Wednesday.
Prime Minister Manuel Marrero, during an intervention in the last annual session of parliament, described the Cuban demographic situation as “complex” and considered that the calculation of the effective population confirms the “profound change in the population structure of the country.”
Currently, for every thousand people aged 0 to 14, there are 1,511 aged 60 or older, he indicated.
Marrero pointed out that since 2019, a natural decrease in the population has been reported, with more people dying than being born, and consequently he said this situation is expected to continue to worsen by the end of 2024.
At the end of this year, the projection is that around 70,000 births will be reported, 18,000 less than the previous year, while approximately 120,000 deaths are expected.
In 2023, the Cuban population registered some 90,300 births, the lowest figure in the last six decades, according to official media reports.
The prime minister acknowledged that in the country “the migratory trend abroad continues” and said that more than three million Cubans are estimated to be living abroad, half of whom have residence in the country, while 1.1 million do not have effective residence on the island.
A recent report by the National Office of Statistics and Information (ONEI) pointed out the impact of the unprecedented migratory exodus of recent years on the decrease of the Cuban population.
The population pyramid is moving towards a “rectangular” shape, it indicated, due to the “sustained low level of fertility” and “the high proportion of working-age people who emigrate.”
Between 2021 and 2023, the number of people aged 60 or older rose from nearly 2.38 million to 2.453 million, which has meant an increase of 3% of this cohort in absolute terms, and in the same period, Cubans aged 15 to 59 shrank from 6.778 million to 5.98 million, almost 12%.
The ONEI acknowledged in the middle of the year that the island’s population had dropped this year below 10 million people, when in 2021 the figure was around 11 million.
According to estimates by independent Cuban demographer Juan Carlos Albizu-Campos, after a drop of 18% between 2022 and 2023, the total population of the island would be estimated at 8.62 million.
