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Population Decline

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This map shows only natural population decreases: places where there are currently more deaths than births. Changes to population sizes due to migration are not shown here.

Only a few countries, which are mainly located in Europe, rely on immigration to maintain their populations. These countries include Sweden, Germany, Spain, Italy and Greece. Some countries are experiencing natural population declines and their population size is not maintained by the immigration, so overall they experience a real decline in numbers living there. In the Russian Federation almost 1 million more people die than are born there – this already sparsely populated country currently has the largest natural population decline, which is reflected in its large area on the map.

Given current downward fertility trends many more countries will soon appear on this map.

Territory size shows the extent of natural population decline that is how many more deaths than births occur.

• Cause of Death Map Index
• View labelled territory map or population map for comparison
• Data files: Excel (small no map), Opendoc format (see notes)
• Technical notes for this data (within larger technical notes file)
• High Resolution image (see copyright conditions)
• All of the data we use is estimated; see data page