Are Uruguayans on the verge of extinction?

The number of inhabitants of Uruguay is stagnating, births are plummeting and the aging of the population is accelerating. According to preliminary data from the 2023 Census, there are 3,444,263 people in the South American country, only 1% more than in 2011. according to figures presented last week, the meager population increase is explained by the arrival of almost 62,000 immigrants. This historical trend has skyrocketed in recent years, and it has given rise to apocalyptic sentiments. “We are a people of old people, [showing] dangerous signs of extinction,” former Uruguayan President José Mujica said in 2011, when the previous census was released.

In 2011, 46,000 people were born in Uruguay. That year the National Institute of Statistics (INE) projected the birth of some 44,000 by 2022, but the number of new Uruguayans was only 32,000. “Every child is going to be very precious,” said Diego Aboal, the director of INE, at the presentation of the 2023 Census. There, it was explained that the slowdown in population growth is a global phenomenon, which began to be recorded in 1985 in Uruguay and became more acute with the fall in births since 2016. In those seven years, the total fertility rate, which measures the average number of children per woman, fell from 2.0 to 1.2.

“The decline in fertility is going in the expected direction, but at an unexpectedly rapid pace,” Ignacio Pardo, a PhD in Sociology and researcher at the Population Program at the School of Social Sciences (University of the Republic), tells EL PAÍS. Over half of this decrease occurred among women under 25 years of age, which includes a decrease in unintended teenage pregnancies, Pardo says. What has happened? He explains that there has been a greater ability to plan, with specific public policies and mass access to birth control methods such as the subdermal contraceptive implant, which is delivered and placed free of charge through the public health system.

In the rest of the age groups, the drop in fertility is multi-causal. Among other factors, Pardo mentions the problems of reconciling paid work with raising children and the “questioning” of motherhood as a plan that’s superior to all others. In addition, job and marital uncertainty may have influenced many women, who make up 52% of the population in total. “Perhaps some of these dimensions will be modified and fertility will not always be so low, but it is highly probable that it will never again be more than two children per woman on average,” the researcher adds.

“It is a scenario we must adapt to rather than fight, in order to concentrate [our] efforts on the population’s welfare in this demographic context,” he says. Pardo distances himself from alarmist positions that predict the eventual extinction of Uruguayans, as some politicians and academics have asserted. Mujica made that prediction in 2011 and renowned historian Benjamín Nahum later made a similar claim: “Births do not cover the mortality rate of the Uruguayan population. What does that mean? That you can do the math to know when Uruguayans will disappear,” Nahum told the Uruguayan newspaper EL PAÍS in 2017.

Pardo notes that alarmism is common in this context and that it can be attributed to a certain nostalgia for the “apparent power” of growing populations, which is different from the Uruguayan case. Uruguay reached a population of 3 million in 1986 and today, with less than 3.5 million [people], “it is witnessing the end of its population growth,” he says. This trend has been permanent “at different speeds,” influenced by the historically low fertility rate in a mostly urban population. In regard to the latter, the trend is also clear: 96% of Uruguayans live in cities, with the population concentrated in the main capitals on the country’s southern coast.

The researchers responsible for the census agreed that the low birth rate was the factor that most influenced the population’s stagnation. Since 2021, more people have died than were born: 39,000 versus 32,000. On the other hand, emigration was not mentioned as a major cause of this stagnation, which it could have been at other times. In fact, almost 600,000 Uruguayans currently reside abroad. Demographic experts estimate that in the 2011–2023 period between censuses, the number of people who emigrated was similar to the number who returned, so this flow would not have moved the needle in demographic terms; on the other hand, the arrival of immigrants from abroad did slightly increase the population.

“If it were not for immigration, the population would be less,” Isaac Alfie, the president of the National Census Commission, said at the presentation of the preliminary results. In the last 12 years, almost 62,000 foreign-born people settled in Uruguay, mainly from Venezuela (27%), Argentina (22%) and Cuba (20%). This migration allowed Uruguay’s population to grow by a scant 1% and prevented it from shrinking. “Hopefully a new wave of immigration has begun that will allow the country to sustain its population and increase it,” Alfie said. In total, 3% of the population living in Uruguay was born abroad.

The rapid aging of Uruguay’s population merited a separate chapter. In this regard, the data show that in 2004 Uruguayans’ average age was 29 years old, while in 2023 it will be 38 years old. In addition, the data reveal that 16% are over 65 years of age; it also says that there are more than 26,000 people over 90 years of age and 822 people over 100 years of age, twice as many as in 2004. “We have challenges in public health and education policies, care and social security,” Aboal, the director of the National Institute of Statistics, remarked. He added that “we are going to have to take action if we want to maintain the welfare state we have, with fewer people working.”

Pardo emphasizes that a population that is not growing is not necessarily in trouble. “In my opinion, the ultimate problems are found in the levels of welfare and inequality of societies, which are linked to demographics, but not in a linear sense,” he points out. In Uruguay’s case, Pardo cites child poverty as an example of this inequality; it affects approximately 157,000 minors. “It makes sense to concentrate [our] efforts on the children who’ve already been born, rather than to encourage possible future births, given that the extent to which these policies can work is not very clear,” he concludes.

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