Where are more people dying than being born?

June 09, 2026 For most of human history, more people were born each year than died. Populations grew very slowly for most of this history, then rapidly in recent centuries, as child mortality plummeted and people lived longer. But this is changing. As the map shows, deaths now outnumber births in a growing number of countries across Europe and East Asia. The balance of births and deaths tells us about a country’s “natural population change” — whether it would grow or shrink without any international migration.