1. Cook Islands
The Cook Islands currently holds the unfortunate distinction of shrinking faster than almost anywhere else on Earth. In 2024, a sharp population decline was registered in the Cook Islands with a 2.24% decrease compared to the previous year, thus topping the list of countries with the fastest shrinking population. Statista’s more recent figures back this up, noting that in the Cook Islands in 2025, the population decreased by about 2.15 percent compared to the previous year, making it the country with the highest population decline rate in 2025.
The driver here isn’t falling birth rates so much as an open door. Residents hold full New Zealand citizenship, and high emigration rates, as citizens especially young people leave for better job opportunities, education, and healthcare in New Zealand and Australia, where they hold full citizenship have hollowed out the islands’ workforce. With a population hovering around 17,000, even small numbers of departures translate into outsized percentage losses.
2. Moldova
Moldova has quietly become the fastest-shrinking sovereign nation outside the world’s tiny island territories. Moldova 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. That’s a staggering loss for a country of just a few million people.
Much of this traces back to the years following EU accession waves nearby, when younger Moldovans left en masse for higher wages elsewhere in 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. Moldova, sitting just outside the EU border, has felt this pull as strongly as any member state.
3. Bulgaria
Bulgaria has spent the past quarter-century as one of Europe’s clearest cautionary tales on demographic decline. Over the full quarter-century from 2000 to 2025, Bulgaria dropped about 23 percent of its population. Long-term projections don’t offer much relief either, with Bulgaria’s population expected to decline by 20.6% from 6.8 million in 2024 to 5.4 million in 2050.
Emigration remains the single biggest factor behind the numbers. Mass outbound migration is the largest contributor towards Bulgaria’s population decline. Add in an aging population and persistently low birth rates, and the country’s shrinking trajectory looks set to continue well past the current decade.
4. Latvia
Latvia sits near the top of nearly every ranking of Europe’s fastest-declining nations. Over the long run, Latvia dropped about 22 percent of its population between 2000 and 2025. The country’s small size means that even modest outflows show up immediately in the percentage figures.
Like its Baltic neighbors, Latvia has struggled to retain younger workers who see stronger wages and broader opportunities in Western Europe. Bulgaria, Lithuania, and Latvia are facing over 20% reductions by 2050, according to demographic modeling built on emigration trends that show little sign of reversing. Combined with one of the lowest birth rates in the EU, Latvia’s population curve continues to bend downward.
5. Lithuania
Lithuania’s story carries an unusual twist. For years it led the pack among shrinking nations, but recent immigration has complicated the picture. Lithuania, which led the previous edition of this ranking with a 5-year decline of nearly 1.5 percent annually, actually grew in 2024 because of immigration from Ukraine and Belarus.
Despite that recent uptick, the longer-term trend still points firmly downward. The Lithuanian population is projected to shrink by 20.7% between 2024 and 2050, from 2.9 million to 2.3 million people. The refugee-driven bump may soften the numbers temporarily, but the underlying fertility and emigration pressures haven’t gone away.
6. Ukraine
War has turned Ukraine’s demographic decline into one of the fastest the modern world has witnessed. In 2023, Ukraine was the fastest shrinking country in the world as the Russian invasion is driving its citizens from their homeland in scores. Millions fled westward into Poland, Germany, and beyond, while the conflict itself has taken a direct toll on the population that remained.
Beyond refugees, the human cost of the fighting compounds the demographic damage in ways few other countries on this list experience. Conflict can be a powerful force in changing a nation’s demographics by creating refugees, but also casualties. Even if hostilities eventually ease, rebuilding a population base eroded by both flight and loss of life will take decades, not years.
7. Romania
Romania’s population has been on a steady downward slide for a generation now, driven largely by young workers heading west after joining the EU. Romania dropped about 16 percent of its population from 2000 to 2025. That places it firmly among the handful of countries that have lost more than one in six residents over a single generation.
The exodus has followed the same script as Bulgaria and the Baltic states. 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. Romania’s rural regions in particular have seen entire villages empty out as younger generations relocate abroad for work.
8. Greece
Greece’s population troubles trace back to a financial crisis that reshaped an entire generation’s choices about family and future. In the 10 years between 2011 and 2021, the country’s birth rate fell by a whopping 30%. That collapse in births, layered on top of an already aging population, has pushed officials to sound genuine alarms.
At the beginning of 2024, the national statistics agency cautioned that the country could suffer population collapse. The scale of what’s projected is significant. The nation of around 10 million people is expected to lose 1 million of them until 2050, which can seriously affect government revenue, the labor market and the functioning of services.
9. Cuba
Cuba’s population decline has been building quietly for years, shaped by both low birth rates and a steady stream of emigration. Cuba’s population of 11 million is expected to shrink to 9.4 million by 2050, a 14.6% decline. That’s a substantial contraction for an island nation that once had one of the region’s larger populations.
Young Cubans leaving for opportunities abroad are accelerating an already aging demographic profile. The young people leaving the country and low birth rates are resulting in an increasingly aging population, and Cuba’s population is expected to be the ninth-oldest in the world by 2050. Economic hardship at home continues to push people toward the United States and elsewhere in Latin America.
10. Italy
Italy’s demographic slide has become a defining feature of its national economic conversation. Italy’s population is projected to shrink by about 12.5% from 2024 to 2050, with the current population of 59.3 million people reduced to 51.9 million. Recent birth data underscores just how steep the trend has become.
In the 2024 to 2025 period, Italy saw births dip below 400,000 annually for the first time in modern records. Young Italians are also voting with their feet. Births are at an all-time low since the unification of Italy, and young people are leaving Italy for other European countries for job opportunities.
11. Japan
Japan remains the textbook example of a wealthy, developed nation grappling with sustained population loss. Japan’s anticipated 16.3% population decrease by 2050 highlights a global trend, with low fertility rates and aging populations contributing significantly. The country’s annual figures illustrate just how large this decline has become in raw numbers.
Japan continued a multi-year contraction, with annual drops exceeding 800,000 at points. With one of the oldest populations on the planet and a fertility rate that stays stubbornly below replacement level, Japan’s shrinking workforce has become a central economic policy challenge for successive governments.
12. South Korea
South Korea’s fertility crisis has reached a point that demographers describe as historically unprecedented. South Korea has the lowest fertility rate ever recorded for a country, with Statistics Korea reporting a total fertility rate of 0.72 in 2023, with a small uptick to 0.748 in 2024. Even that modest improvement leaves the country far below the 2.1 rate needed to sustain a stable population.
Recent figures suggest the trend may be leveling off slightly, though not reversing. South Korea recorded one of the world’s lowest rates in recent years, hovering near or below 0.8 before modest upticks in preliminary 2025 figures. High living costs, demanding work culture, and housing pressures in cities like Seoul continue to discourage young couples from having children.
13. China
China’s population decline stands apart for its sheer scale, even if its percentage rate looks modest next to smaller nations. China’s population fell for the fourth straight year in 2025, dropping by 3.39 million to 1.405 billion, on top of declines of 1.39 million in 2024, 2.08 million in 2023, and 850,000 in 2022. Birth numbers have collapsed even faster than the overall population figures suggest.
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. Long-range UN projections paint an even starker picture. 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.
These thirteen nations represent very different paths to the same outcome: fewer people tomorrow than today. Some are losing residents to war, some to economic opportunity abroad, and others simply aren’t having enough children to replace the generations that came before them. Whatever the cause, the shared challenge ahead involves supporting aging populations, shrinking workforces, and economies built for growth that no longer have it.
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