Cuba recorded 136,214 deaths in 2025 compared to only 68,064 births, which means that deaths nearly double the births for the first time in the country's recent history, according to official data presented on Tuesday by the National Office of Statistics and Information (ONEI) at a press conference.
The data was presented by Juan Carlos Alfonso Fraga, Deputy Head of ONEI, and Diego Enrique González Galbán, Director of the Population and Development Studies Center, who confirmed that the effective population of the country at the end of 2025 stood at 9,434,593 inhabitants, a decrease of 313,414 people compared to 2024.
The 68,064 births registered last year represent the lowest figure in recent decades, even lower than that of 1899, when Cuba was emerging from the War of Independence.
The overall fertility rate remained for the second consecutive year at 1.29 children per woman, the lowest historical figure since records began in 1958, well below the generational replacement level of 2.1.
Natural growth fell to -7.1 per 1,000 inhabitants, indicating that the island is losing population even before accounting for emigration.
This vegetative collapse is compounded by an unrestrained exodus: the negative migration balance in 2025 was -245,264 people, the primary driver of the overall decline.
In just five years, Cuba lost 1,259,894 people of working age, a direct blow to the country's productive capacity that is unprecedented outside of war contexts.
The level of population aging has reached 26.7%, solidifying Cuba as the most aged country in Latin America and the Caribbean by a wide margin.
Infant mortality stood at 9.9 per 1,000 live births, a figure that the regime itself acknowledges as a 148% increase compared to 2018, when it was 4.0.
The deputy head of the ONEI did not conceal the seriousness of the situation: "There is no similar experience," admitted Alfonso Fraga, noting that no country in the so-called Global South has experienced a population contraction of that magnitude outside of a war context.
Since 2020, Cuba's population has decreased from approximately 11 million inhabitants to 9.4 million, a reduction of more than 1.6 million in five years that independent experts consider even deeper.
Demographer Juan Carlos Albizu-Campos estimated that the actual population at the end of 2024 was only 8,025,624 people, a 24% decrease from 2020, and described the phenomenon as a "demographic emptiness" characteristic of a "quasi-permanent polycrisis."
Meanwhile, Miguel Díaz-Canel downplayed the exodus last June by labeling the emigration a "global problem", evading the regime's responsibility in a crisis that its own statistics confirm as historic.
The United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA) warned on July 1 that, if current trends continue, Cuba could have only 5.6 million inhabitants by 2100, less than half of the current population.
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