Worldwide Demographics

[New Brisavoine]

Originally Posted by Yuri

England and Wales take ages to compute births and deaths. I was expecting a tiny negative but I tiny positive emerged: 649,410 births and 648,776 deaths for a +634 surplus (+10,922 in 2024). TFR stands now at 1.39. Population: 69,487,000.

Population of England and Wales is not 69,487,000. It's 61,806,682 as per the latest estimates.

[Yuri]

Originally Posted by New Brisavoine

Population of England and Wales is not 69,487,000. It's 61,806,682 as per the latest estimates.

It’s the UK. What I meant was they took ages to release the numbers because England and Wales only released their final numbers on May 27th.

Britain added 1 million people between 2023 and 2024 and since the turn of the century, added an average of 500k people annually. For the next ten years, I see this number falling dramatically, to something close to 100k/year.

[New Brisavoine]

And at the same time the population increase in France is getting larger and larger, due to a lack of political will to contain immigration. France is shaping up more and more as the last Western country to keep open borders (along with Spain).

[Yuri]

Originally Posted by New Brisavoine

And at the same time the population increase in France is getting larger and larger, due to a lack of political will to contain immigration. France is shaping up more and more as the last Western country to keep open borders (along with Spain).

It's not that high either. Metropolitan France is growing at 200k/year. All imigration as natural growth went negative.

Spain it's indeed heavy, growing by almost 600k/year. And as the have a negative natural growth of 120k/year, it's 700k new immigrants every year. That's a lot.

[New Brisavoine]

Originally Posted by Yuri

It's not that high either. Metropolitan France is growing at 200k/year. All imigration as natural growth went negative.

Actually the population growth of France in 2022 (last year for which we have data) was +360,000. In 2022, France registered the highest net migration in its entire history (with the exception of 1962 when 800,000 Europeans fled Algeria and arrived in France).

And the data from the Ministry of Interior show that immigration (migrant visas) was even higher in 2023, 2024, and 2025 than in 2022, so that means the population growth of France after 2022 must have been higher than in 2022.

The population growth for the year 2023 will be published in January 2027.

[MolsonExport]

Canada is still growing by ~1000 people a day. And very, very little of that is through natural growth.

https://www150.statcan.gc.ca/n1/pub/71-607-x/71-607-x2018005-eng.htm

I guess France isn't

the last Western country to keep open borders

[MonkeyRonin]

Originally Posted by MolsonExport

Canada is still growing by ~1000 people a day. And very, very little of that is through natural growth.

https://www150.statcan.gc.ca/n1/pub/71-607-x/71-607-x2018005-eng.htm

I guess France isn't

Indeed. Worth noting that Canada's (slight) population decline isn't because immigration has been closed off - the estimated number of new permanent resident admissions for 2026 is 380,000 - down from a high of 480,000 in 2024, but still above historical norms.

The reason for the decline is because the number of temporary work/student visas has been drastically reduced - from about 1.9 million in 2022 to 385,000 in 2026; meaning more people are leaving the country as their visas expire than are currently coming in.

[New Brisavoine]

Originally Posted by New Brisavoine

Actually the population growth of France in 2022 (last year for which we have data) was +360,000. In 2022, France registered the highest net migration in its entire history (with the exception of 1962 when 800,000 Europeans fled Algeria and arrived in France).

And the data from the Ministry of Interior show that immigration (migrant visas) was even higher in 2023, 2024, and 2025 than in 2022, so that means the population growth of France after 2022 must have been higher than in 2022.

In recent years, the increase in the net migration of France was ca. 25% higher than the increase in the number of migrant visas issued by the Ministry of Interior. So if that was still the case in 2023, 2024, and 2025, we should expect a total population growth for France of +406,000 in 2023, +480,000 in 2024, and +658,000 in 2025, with a record high net migration of ca. +604,000 to +624,000 in 2025.

2026 should set a new record, since Macron hasn't done anything to tackle immigration so far, and now that other European countries are closing their doors to immigrants (with the exception of Spain), France is a natural outlet for immigrants arriving in the EU.

It could lower after May 2027 if the far-right comes to power, but it's still far from certain the French people will vote for a far-right majority. If it's the same sort of Macron-centrists who are elected, then nothing will be seriously done to tackle immigration, and the numbers should remain high.

France probably reached the 70 million mark in the beginning of 2026, but we will know that for certain only when they publish the results of the January 2026 census in December 2029, and the results of the January 2027 census in December 2030.

[New Brisavoine]

Originally Posted by MonkeyRonin

Indeed. Worth noting that Canada's (slight) population decline isn't because immigration has been closed off - the estimated number of new permanent resident admissions for 2026 is 380,000 - down from a high of 480,000 in 2024, but still above historical norms.

The reason for the decline is because the number of temporary work/student visas has been drastically reduced - from about 1.9 million in 2022 to 385,000 in 2026; meaning more people are leaving the country as their visas expire than are currently coming in.

Net migration counts everybody, including foreign students and temporary migrants. Anyone staying more than 6 months in the country is a migrant. So if Canada has restricted temporary work/student visas, then it has indeed curtailed immigration.

[MolsonExport]

[Yuri]

Originally Posted by Yuri

Japan's 2025 Census is out: 123,049,524 people.

1920: 55,963,053
1930: 64,450,005
1940: 73,114,308
1950: 83,199,637
1960: 93,418,501
1970: 103,720,060
1980: 117,060,396
1990: 123,611,167
2000: 126,925,843
2010: 128,057,352
2015: 127,094,745
2020: 126,146,099
2025: 123,049,524

Japanese annual estimates are very good, but the result came below the 2025 estimate by 150,000 people.

Population decline is speeding up as it always occurs as there are big old people cohorts dying off: from -1,000,000 (2015-2020) to -3,000,000 (2020-2025).

As Japan doesn't have much immigration, it's quite easy to estimate population for 2030 based on natural growth evolution (births minus deaths). I expect a low 119 million or a high 118 million counted on the 2030 Census.

In this scenario Japan will have lost almost 10 million people compared to the 2010 peak. That's a lot of people and that's why we have entire rural regions, far away suburbs, mid-sized industrial cities completely abandoned as population flocks to central Tokyo, central Osaka, central Nagoya, Fukuoka etc.

What we've discussed several times: people tend to flock into primate cities when population starts declining:

JAPAN
2020: 126,146,099
2025: 123,049,524 --- -2.45%

TOKYO
2020: 9,733,276
2025: 9,953,160 --- +2.26%

OSAKA
2020: 2,752,412
2025: 2,808,624 --- +2.04%

NAGOYA
2020: 2,332,176
2025: 2,345,892 --- +0.59%

Meanwhile, the island of SHIKOKU:

2020: 3,696,171
2025: 3,486,739 --- -5.67%

And not only rural areas are collapsing, but big cities suburbs/exurbs as well:

SAYAMA-IRUMA (Tokyo)
2020: 294,350
2025: 282,931 --- -3.88%

NARA (Osaka)
2020: 354,630
2025: 338,416 --- -4.57%

ICHINOMIYA (Nagoya)
2020: 380,073
2025: 368,755 --- -2.98%

Same for mid-sized cities:

NAGASAKI
2020: 409,118
2025: 381,738 --- -6.69%

[New Brisavoine]

Fascinating map published on Twitter. Lots of patterns. I note in particular the strong emigration of Northern Portuguese to Paris, which is well documentated. More puzzling are the dark spots in Northern Romania and Eastern Serbia. It could be the Roms (Gypsies) from these countries who migrated to Paris and now form many slums around the city, but I'm not certain.

[Wigs]

Where do people in Paris have the most friends?

Who cares!? this is the world demographic thread

[Yuri]

Country vs Country

Just a random comparison on how those countries were in completely different levels back in the late 1980's and now they're pretty much equals:

Bulgaria
1988: 8,981,446
2025: 6,423,207 (-2,558,239; -28.5%)

Denmark
1989: 5,129,778
2026: 6,025,603 (+895,825; +17.5%)


And an even more extreme case:

Ukraine
1993: 52,244,100
2025: 28,700,000 (-23,544,100; -45.1%)

Britain
1993: 57,713,900
2025: 69,487,000 (+11,773,100; +20.4%)


And:

Latvia
1990: 2,668,140
2025: 1,823,500 (-844,640; -31.7%)

Ireland
1990: 3,506,000
2025: 5,458,600 (+1,952,600; +56.0%)

[New Brisavoine]

Extract from a conversation with a German guy on Twitter (following the cancellation yesterday of the future Franco-German combat aircraft project, with France now going it alone with Dassault). The (German) guy was saying that German workers would never move to Bordeaux to work in the Dassault plants there because :

Bavarian alps mogg any of those ugly non-European migrant overrun French coastal cities like Marseille.

Reality check, these are the percentages of immigrants in Munich and smaller Bavarian metro areas compared to the Marseille and Bordeaux metro areas. All of them have higher percentages of immigrants than Marseille, let alone Bordeaux.



I think this misperception of reality comes from the fact that in Marseille the immigrants are concentrated in the inner city, whereas the suburbs of Marseille have extremely few immigrants, and usually visitors and media form their image of a city based on its city center, so they imagine Marseille as an impoverished place full of immigrants, but in fact the metro area is very affluent (richer than most Italian cities and equal to Milan) and doesn't have that many immigrants compared to German, Benelux or British metro areas.

I guess Detroit suffers from the same sort of misperception.

Marseille inner city:
(for context, in France, satellite dishes = Muslim North African immigrants)



This particular census tract in the inner city, which bears the oddly poetic name of Bellevue, has a population density of 137,427 inh. per km² (356,000 inh. per sq. mile), the highest density in the entire city of Marseille.



Marseille suburbs, sharp contrast:







This is in the suburbs of Marseille, not in the city proper.





Marseille is a very, very confusing place. Even the French people (not from Provence) always get the city wrong. It's a pity their lousy authorities don't do a better job at scrubbing and gentrifying the city center. It greatly affects the image of Marseille in a negative way.

[Crawford]

Munich is a major immigrant city and Marseille isn't. Bigots are usually referring to brown non-European looking people, regardless of immigration status. Munich is mostly immigrants from other European nations.

Germany is a lot less "brown" than France even if it's a much bigger immigrant nation. Where my parents are from a black person will be rare enough to turn heads, even in 2026. That would not happen in France. There are tons of Turks and Slavs and Southern Europeans, but few brown folks until very recently.

[eschaton]

Originally Posted by Crawford

Munich is a major immigrant city and Marseille isn't. Bigots are usually referring to brown non-European looking people, regardless of immigration status. Munich is mostly immigrants from other European nations.

Germany is a lot less "brown" than France even if it's a much bigger immigrant nation. Where my parents are from a black person will be rare enough to turn heads, even in 2026. That would not happen in France. There are tons of Turks and Slavs and Southern Europeans, but few brown folks until very recently.

There's not a huge difference in shade between the average Algerian and average Turk, is there?

[MonkeyRonin]

Originally Posted by New Brisavoine

Net migration counts everybody, including foreign students and temporary migrants. Anyone staying more than 6 months in the country is a migrant. So if Canada has restricted temporary work/student visas, then it has indeed curtailed immigration.

This is moreso a correction to a brief period of abnormally high temporary migration though. Aside from those few years of the early 2020s, Canada would not typically admit 1 million+ temporary migrants annually. That was a pretty extreme aberration; which is resulting in an equally large outflow of people now that migration patterns have come back down to earth.

Temporary migration has simply returned to historic norms; while permanent migration has returned to above-average historic norms.

Originally Posted by Yuri

Ukraine
1993: 52,244,100
2025: 28,700,000 (-23,544,100; -45.1%)

Bit of an outlier for obvious reasons. Does the 2025 include the Russian-occupied & breakaway parts of the country, or is it the population of free Ukraine only?

[New Brisavoine]

Originally Posted by Crawford

Munich is mostly immigrants from other European nations.

The Munich metro area has 14.6% of its population who are non-EU immigrants, as opposed to 15.6% in the Marseille metro area. It's very close. And higher than the Bordeaux metro area (8.0%).

[Yuri]

Originally Posted by New Brisavoine

Extract from a conversation with a German guy on Twitter (following the cancellation yesterday of the future Franco-German combat aircraft project, with France now going it alone with Dassault). The (German) guy was saying that German workers would never move to Bordeaux to work in the Dassault plants there because :

(...)

Casual trailer parking racism. Cute.

Originally Posted by Crawford

Munich is a major immigrant city and Marseille isn't. Bigots are usually referring to brown non-European looking people, regardless of immigration status. Munich is mostly immigrants from other European nations.

Germany is a lot less "brown" than France even if it's a much bigger immigrant nation. Where my parents are from a black person will be rare enough to turn heads, even in 2026. That would not happen in France. There are tons of Turks and Slavs and Southern Europeans, but few brown folks until very recently.

We're in 2026 and people keep dropping vile petty racism as it was nothing. And we're right: no one is discussing legal and illegal immigration. It's about White and non-White immigration. People don't even pretend otherwise.

Originally Posted by MonkeyRonin

Bit of an outlier for obvious reasons. Does the 2025 include the Russian-occupied & breakaway parts of the country, or is it the population of free Ukraine only?

Population of Kiev-controlled areas and the real number is probably even lower. Even if we consider the 1993 borders, Ukraine would have relatively lost way more people than Latvia or Bulgaria. Donbas republics are a classic Rust Belt area and had already been losing more people than the rest of the country.