Ukraine's birth rate continues its downward trend in 2024, as official data shows one newborn per three deaths in the first six months of the year, the Opendatabot service said on Aug. 5.
Some 87,655 children were born in the first half of 2024, while 250,972 citizens died of various causes during the same period, data shows. The numbers are likely incomplete because of Russia's ongoing occupation of Ukrainian territories.
While the low birth rates and high mortality have been a long-standing issue in Ukraine, the demographic crisis has deepened during the Covid-19 pandemic and Russia's full-scale war.
According to data from the Justice Ministry, the most recorded births were in the city of Kyiv (9,695), Lviv Oblast in the west (7,923), and the heavily populated Dnipropetrovsk Oblast (6,962) in the central-eastern part of the country.
The fewest births were recorded in front-line and border oblasts, like Chernihiv (1,904), Sumy (1,798), Zaporizhzhia (1,576), Donetsk (702), and Kherson (221) oblasts. The latter three are under partial occupation by Russia, meaning not all data is available.
Ukraine did not record official data on birth rates in either completely occupied Crimea or almost completely occupied Luhansk Oblast.
Most deaths between January and June 2024 were recorded in Dnipropetrovsk Oblast (26,374), northeastern Kharkiv Oblast (17,999), and southern Odesa Oblast (16,085). All three regions are heavily populated and host some of Ukraine's largest cities, though they also suffer regular Russian attacks.
The data cited by Opendatabot did not distinguish between different causes of death.
The birth rate in 2024 is 1.4 times smaller than during a six-month period in 2021 when 132,595 births were recorded. The number of deaths in the same time span in 2021 was 349,041, though this figure was recorded during the peak of the Covid-19 pandemic.
In 2019, the number of deaths during half a year was 304,330, while the number of births was 149,549.
Emigration and refugees is another key factor deepening Ukraine's demographic crisis. Over 6 million Ukrainians remain abroad after they fled the country as a result of Russia's full-scale war. Around 700,000 more people are expected to leave Ukraine in 2024-2025.
The country's population went from its peak of over 50 million in the early 1990s to over 37 million by January 2024. According to one of the U.N.'s projections, the population could drop to 15.3 million by 2100.
The Kyiv Independent news desk
