In Havana, Deaths Nearly Triple Births
Official data shows a country in the midst of a demographic collapse, driven by the emigration of young people and a substantial decline in the working-age population.
HAVANA TIMES – The demographic yearbook published Thursday by the National Office of Statistics and Information (ONEI) confirms what the official press had already reported last month: for every child born in Cuba during 2025, two people died, and the aging of the population continues unabated.
Specifically, 136,214 deaths were recorded on the island last year, twice the number of births (68,064). People aged 60 and over now account for 26.7% of the country’s population. To get an idea of the magnitude of the decline, the report puts Cuba’s median age at 43, well above the figure of 32 for the Americas as a whole.
Cuba’s figures are, in fact, more similar to those of Europe, but without the same level of development. The total fertility rate remains at 1.29 children per woman for the second consecutive year, the lowest figures since 1958. The gross reproduction rate stands at 0.62 children per woman, far below the 2.1 births per woman considered necessary for generational replacement.
Regarding the island’s population, the ONEI report differs slightly from the figure published by Granma last July: it puts the population at 9,434,593 at the end of last year, down from the 9,436,440 previously reported. It is a figure, however, that should be treated with caution because of inconsistencies in official statistics and delays in publishing complete data. Independent demographer Juan Carlos Albizu-Campos estimated Cuba’s population at the end of 2024 at just over 8 million, a decline of 24% in four years.
One particularly telling chart shows the overall net migration rate: negative in every province, ranging from -33.6 per thousand inhabitants in Havana to -19.8 per thousand in Holguín.
The capital is by far the hardest hit, both by emigration and by the gap between births and deaths: nearly three times as many people die as are born there, and it also has the country’s highest infant mortality rate, at 14.2 per thousand live births. Its population decline rate is the highest in the country (-43.9 per thousand inhabitants), and it accounts for nearly a third of Cuba’s total external migration deficit: 78,537 of the more than 245,265 people who left the island last year.
The exodus that began in late 2021, following the repression of the July 11 protests, has not stopped, and the unprecedented energy crisis, which has worsened since the beginning of this year following the US intervention in Venezuela, can be expected to deepen it.
Looking more closely at the figures, Havana’s Plaza de la Revolución municipality has the highest aging rate in the country, with 38.2% of its residents aged 60 or older. At the opposite extreme is Guantanamo, which has the island’s lowest rate of population decline (-22.9 per thousand) and the highest birth rate, at 9.1 births per thousand inhabitants. Its municipality of Yateras has the youngest population in the country, with only 17.9% aged 60 or older.
As for the working-age population, the data show that it shrank by 1,259,894 people over the past five years, falling from 6,866,435 in 2021 to 5,606,541 in 2025.
Following the publication of the figures, authorities once again called for “designing policies and services that adapt to the existing population structure.” Last July, in comments to Granma, Antonio Aja Díaz, director of the Center for Demographic Studies at the University of Havana, spoke of a migration policy that recognizes not only the right to migrate, but also “the right not to have to do so.”
The Communist Party newspaper spoke of a “national project” and the need for young people to “see themselves represented.” But there is no way to make the data conform to those aspirations: Cuba has fewer births than ever, more deaths than in any year since the pandemic, and a young population that continues to leave the country.
First published in Spanish by 14ymedio and translated and posted in English by Havana Times.