Not every country is growing. A significant and expanding group of countries with declining populations — concentrated in East Asia and Eastern Europe — are seeing birth rates fall below the level needed to sustain their current headcount.
Countries with Shrinking Populations
- Japan — one of the earliest and most closely watched cases of sustained population decline, driven by very low birth rates and a rapidly aging society
- China — now in decline after decades as the world’s most populous country, following years of the one-child policy and falling birth rates
- South Korea — has one of the lowest fertility rates recorded anywhere in the world
- Italy — one of the fastest-aging populations in Europe
- Bulgaria and Latvia — losing population through both low birth rates and emigration
- Russia — long-term decline driven by low fertility, though partly offset in past decades by migration
Track exact current population totals on our Rankings page as data updates.
Why Populations Shrink
Population decline happens when the fertility rate — the average number of children per woman — falls below roughly 2.1, the “replacement rate” needed to keep a population stable generation over generation. Urbanization, rising education and career participation among women, high costs of raising children, and delayed marriage all contribute, and once a country’s fertility rate falls, it tends to stay low for a long time. This is the near-opposite pattern of the fastest growing populations by country, most of which are in Sub-Saharan Africa.
What Declining Populations Mean for a Country
A shrinking, aging population creates real economic pressure: fewer working-age people to support a growing share of retirees, rising healthcare and pension costs, and labor shortages in some industries. Japan in particular has become a widely studied case study in how a developed economy adapts to sustained demographic decline. It’s also part of why Japan is one of the oldest countries in the world by median age.
Frequently Asked Questions
Which major country has the fastest declining population?
China and Japan are both widely cited examples of major economies with sustained, significant population decline.
Can a declining population be reversed?
It’s difficult but not impossible — countries can boost fertility through family-friendly policy, or offset decline through immigration, though few examples of a full reversal exist among developed economies so far.
Is a declining population always bad?
Not necessarily for the environment or resource use per person, but it typically creates significant economic and social adjustment challenges, especially around pensions and workforce size.
Compare population trends across countries directly with our Compare tool.
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