Cuba’s population is shrinking because of a combination of mass emigration, a fertility rate far below replacement level, and a rapidly aging society. While the rest of Latin America and the Caribbean grew by 0.7% in 2024, Cuba’s population contracted by 0.4%, making it one of the few countries in the Western Hemisphere actively losing people. The island’s population dropped from roughly 11.1 million in 2021 to about 11 million in 2024, and the decline is accelerating.
Emigration at Crisis Scale
The single biggest driver is people leaving. The United States registered 224,607 encounters with Cuban migrants and asylum seekers in fiscal year 2022, a 471% increase from the 39,303 recorded the year before. That pace barely slowed: in fiscal year 2024, encounters with Cuban nationals reached 208,308. On top of border crossings, the U.S. humanitarian parole program authorized travel for 111,000 Cubans through September 2024. The U.S. Coast Guard interdicted over 6,900 Cubans at sea in fiscal year 2023 alone, surpassing the prior year’s total of 6,182.
These numbers represent only migration toward the United States. Thousands more have left for Mexico, Spain, and other destinations. A Columbia University analysis described the population decline as being “of a magnitude typically observed only in contexts of armed conflict,” though Cuban authorities have generally framed the situation as a demographic challenge rather than a migration crisis.
A Fertility Rate Stuck Well Below Replacement
Cuba’s total fertility rate sat at 1.4 births per woman in 2023, according to World Bank data. That’s well below the 2.1 needed just to keep a population stable without immigration. For context, countries like Indonesia, Panama, and Venezuela all hovered right at 2.1 the same year. Cuba’s rate has been below replacement for decades, but the recent economic crisis has pushed it even lower.
In 2024, Cuba recorded just 71,374 births. That number is actually fewer than the 74,079 births recorded in 1899, when the island had a fraction of its current population. Researchers at Columbia University called this a pattern of “Malthusianism of Poverty,” meaning Cuban families are having fewer children not by comfortable choice but as a survival strategy during economic hardship. When food is scarce, medicine is unreliable, and electricity cuts are routine, starting or expanding a family becomes a risk many people simply won’t take.
The government has acknowledged low fertility as a problem, but proposed solutions have gained little traction. As one analysis put it, promoting higher fertility “under current conditions” has little chance of success when the economic and political model driving the crisis remains unchanged.
An Aging Population With Fewer Young People
Cuba is one of the oldest societies in Latin America. In 2024, people over 65 made up 16.6% of the total population. The elderly-to-child ratio (people 60 and older compared to those under 15) had already reached 1.3 by 2020, meaning there were more seniors than children. That gap has only widened since, as young adults leave the country in large numbers and birth rates continue to fall.
This creates a demographic spiral. Fewer young people means fewer future parents, which means even fewer births in the coming decades. Meanwhile, the people most likely to emigrate are working-age adults, leaving behind a population that skews older and produces less economic output to support those who remain.
The Brain Drain Compounding the Crisis
Emigration isn’t random. Cuba is losing its most educated and skilled workers at a staggering rate. Between 2020 and 2024, the country lost more than 30,000 healthcare professionals, including doctors, nurses, and technicians. In 2022 alone, more than 12,000 physicians left, with additional waves following in 2023 and 2024.
The reasons go beyond low pay. Highly trained specialists face limited opportunities for research, academic advancement, or access to modern technology. Continuing medical education programs are scarce. Younger physicians, particularly those under 35, increasingly see emigration as the only realistic path to professional development and dignified working conditions. The same dynamic plays out in education and other skilled professions.
This hollowing out of the healthcare workforce has real consequences for the population that stays. Cuba once boasted infant and child mortality rates on par with or better than the United States and Canada. The system that achieved those results depended on a dense network of community-based care, including over 300 maternity homes designed to monitor high-risk pregnancies. Cost-cutting measures have already forced closures of some of these facilities, putting added pressure on remaining local doctors. As thousands more clinicians leave each year, the infrastructure that kept families healthy erodes further, potentially discouraging childbearing even more.
Economic Collapse as the Common Thread
Every factor feeding Cuba’s population decline connects back to the economy. The island faces persistent shortages of food, fuel, and medicine. Power outages are frequent. Inflation has eroded purchasing power. The Cuban government does not officially recognize the existence of poverty within the country, but the daily reality for most residents involves rationing, long lines, and improvisation to meet basic needs.
Under these conditions, young people leave, couples delay or forgo having children, and the population ages in place. The government’s framing of the crisis as a demographic problem, solvable through fertility incentives, misses the point. People aren’t leaving or choosing not to have children because of abstract demographic trends. They’re responding rationally to an economic and political system that, as researchers have noted, “seems unresponsive” to the conditions driving them away.
Without significant economic reform, the math is straightforward: Cuba will continue losing people to emigration faster than births can replace them, and the births themselves will keep declining as the pool of potential parents shrinks. The population stood at 11 million in 2024. If current trends hold, that number will keep falling for years to come.