Ukraine has turned out to be the worst in the world in terms of demographic trends, the IMF says

Ukraine has shown the worst demographic trend in the world. Its population has declined by a third (-33%) over the past 25 years: from 48.8 million people in 2000 to 32.9 million in 2025.

This was reported by Visual Capitalist, based on data from the International Monetary Fund.

“Alongside long-term economic factors, the war with Russia has accelerated Ukraine’s population decline,” the study says.

More broadly, Eastern Europe and the Baltic states have become the global epicenter of depopulation.

The closest to Ukraine in terms of population loss were the Marshall Islands (-29%). The negative ranking also includes a number of other Eastern European and post-Soviet countries: Bulgaria (-23%), Latvia (-22%), Moldova (-19%), and Lithuania (-18%).

In Russia, the decline amounted to 1% of the population.

At the same time, according to IMF data, between 2000 and 2025 the world’s population grew on average by 46.6%, but that growth has been distributed very unevenly.

The main demographic growth has been driven not by the largest economies, but by a limited group of Gulf countries and sub-Saharan African states.

The leaders in population growth over the past quarter century are Qatar (+423%), the UAE (+250%), and Equatorial Guinea (+167%).

Earlier, media outlets had already written that Ukraine is experiencing one of the most severe demographic crises in the world.