According to a new Eurostat forecast, by 2100, the population of the EU will decrease by 11.7%, or by 53 million people. The corresponding forecast was published on Thursday.
It is expected that by 2029, the population of the EU will even slightly increase, reaching a peak of 453 million people.
However, after that, the EU will enter a period of prolonged decline, and by the end of the century, the population will decrease to less than 400 million people: there will be fewer young people and adults of working age, while the share of people over 80 years old will more than double compared to the current figure.
Among the reasons cited is the fact that Europeans are having fewer children. The birth rate has dropped to about 1.3 children per woman, which is significantly below the population replacement level. This figure continues to fall.
What about Latvia?
Latvian experts, meanwhile, are calculating the number of remaining residents of Latvia.
The baseline scenario predicts that the population in Latvia will decrease over the next 30 years to the current level of Estonia, while in Lithuania it will decline towards the current level of Latvia, said economist Jānis Hermanis.
In numbers, by the end of the century, Latvia will have 1.23 million people. This is more than twice less than at its peak in the 1980s.
<script async src="https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script>Vērtējot % izteiksmē pret šī brīža līmeni, Latvijā tuvākajos gados tiek prognozēts straujākais iedzīvotāju skaita kritums starp Baltijas valstīm 2/2 pic.twitter.com/ctNAEmKLe2
— Jānis Hermanis (@J_Hermanis) April 16, 2026
