MIAMI — Cuba is losing population at a pace even its own state media now openly acknowledges as a crisis, with 2025 marking the country’s lowest birth count in decades and a death toll nearly double that number — a demographic collapse unfolding alongside the same chronic blackouts and economic deterioration that have defined life on the island throughout 2026.
Cuba registered 68,051 births in 2025, the lowest figure in decades, against 136,214 deaths — meaning the island now records nearly two deaths for every child born. The resulting natural population decline for the year was 66,303 people.
According to figures published by the state newspaper Granma and drawn from research by the Center for Demographic Studies (CEDEM) at the University of Havana, Cuba began 2026 with an official population of 9,436,440 people, though independent Cuban outlets have cautioned that even this figure should be read with caution given known inconsistencies in official statistics and delays in publishing complete demographic data through the National Statistics and Information Office (ONEI).
The birth decline has been steady and sustained for years: Cuba recorded roughly 99,000 births in 2021, about 95,000 in 2022, just over 71,000 in 2024, and 68,051 in 2025.
Cuba’s Global Fertility Rate has held at 1.29 children per woman for a second consecutive year — the lowest level since 1958 — while its Gross Reproduction Rate sits at just 0.62 children per woman, far below the 2.1 threshold needed for generational replacement.
An Aging Island
Cuba’s population has aged sharply alongside its shrinking birth rate. People aged 60 and older now make up 26.7% of the national population. The age group with the least representation in Cuba’s demographic structure is children aged 0 to 4, a direct consequence of sustained low fertility, according to CEDEM researcher Arelis Rosalen Mora Pérez.
Cuba’s working-age population has fallen sharply as a result of these combined pressures, dropping from 6,866,435 people in 2021 to 5,606,541 in 2025 — a loss of nearly 1.26 million working-age Cubans in just five years.
Emigration Compounds the Collapse
Cuba’s demographic crisis cannot be separated from its ongoing exodus. The government itself estimates more than 3 million Cubans now live abroad, roughly half of them without residency status on the island. Mora Pérez noted that as of the end of 2024, 50% of Cubans who emigrated were young people and children under 35 — precisely the population the island needs to sustain future birth rates.
The emigration wave has been disproportionately female: during the 2020-2024 migration surge, 57% of emigrants were women, according to demographer Juan Carlos Albizu-Campos, directly reducing the number of women of reproductive age who remain on the island and further compounding the birth decline.
Albizu-Campos has warned that if current trends continue, Cuba’s population could fall to as low as 5.6 million people — a demographic “hollowing out,” in his words, driven by the combined weight of low fertility, high mortality, aging, and emigration.
A Government Report That Can’t Avoid the Obvious
Cuba’s own state-run coverage of these figures has drawn notice for what it omits as much as what it includes. Independent outlet 14ymedio observed that state-run newspaper Granma, addressed Cuba’s demographic “mirror” without confronting the economic conditions driving so many Cubans to leave, instead framing potential responses around sex education, expanded access to contraception, and calls for greater political participation — sidestepping the structural economic crisis that has defined daily life on the island throughout this period.
The Backdrop: Blackouts & Economic Collapse
The demographic figures represent a reality of sustained hardship that has become normalized on the island. Cubans have spent much of 2026 enduring near-constant electrical blackouts, with residents in Havana photographed sleeping outdoors along the Malecón seawall during summer nights, seeking relief from both heat and the frequent power cuts.
That deprivation compounds a broader economic crisis that has driven the emigration wave directly responsible for accelerating the island’s aging and birth decline — even as Cuba’s military-run conglomerate GAESA, we’ve reported separately, has been found holding roughly $18 billion in liquid assets, exceeding the combined international reserves of Costa Rica, Panama, and Uruguay.
A Rare Regional Bright Spot, and a Stark Contrast
Not every part of the island shows the same severity. Guantánamo, in Cuba’s eastern extreme, recorded the country’s lowest rate of population decline (-22.9 per thousand) and leads the nation in birth rate, with 9.1 births per 1,000 residents; its municipality of Yateras is the country’s least aged, with just 17.9% of its population over 60.
But island-wide, with no sign that the underlying drivers — chronic economic hardship, sustained blackouts, and continued emigration of young Cubans, particularly women of reproductive age — are set to ease, demographers like Albizu-Campos see little reason to expect the trend to reverse on its own. Whether Cuba’s government moves beyond the largely symbolic responses outlined in its own state media coverage toward addressing the structural economic conditions driving the crisis remains, for now, an open and largely unaddressed question.
