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Countries by Population Decrease

Name the countries that have lost at least 1 million people during some period since 1950.
Only one episode per country is considered. By absolute numbers, not relative numbers.
Based on modern-day territorial boundaries. Not counting events where one country split from another (Bangladesh leaving Pakistan, e.g.)
More info in stickied comment
Quiz by Quizmaster
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Last updated: October 11, 2023
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First submittedDecember 29, 2016
Times taken43,122
Average score60.9%
Rating4.36
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Decrease
Span
Cause
Country
15–45 m
1958–1962
Famine
China
15.8 m +
1993–
Demographics / war
Ukraine
5.86 m
1994–2008
Demographics
Russia
5.17 m
2010–
Demographics
Japan
3.95 m
2012–2016
War
Syria
3.58 m +
1991–
Demographics
Romania
3.13 m
1979–1983
War
Afghanistan
2.74 m
2017–2022
Economic collapse
Venezuela
2.65 m
1994–1995
War / genocide
Rwanda
2.34 m
1980–
Demographics
Bulgaria
1.84 m
1992–2000
Demographics
Kazakhstan
1.75 m
1989–
Demographics
Georgia
1.56 m
2014–
Demographics
Italy
1.45 m +
1993–
Demographics
Moldova
1.30 m
1992–
War / genocide /
demographics
Bosnia and Herzegovina
1.25 m
1950–1954
War
North Korea
1.19 m
2015–
Return of refugees?
Lebanon
1.15 m
1990–1991
War
Kuwait
1.13 m
1973–1984
Demographics
Germany
1.09 m
1992–
Demographics
Lithuania
1.02 m +
1980–
Demographics
Hungary
1.01 m
1993–
Demographics
Belarus
1.00 m
1975–1979
Genocide
Cambodia
+6
Level ∞
Oct 11, 2023
Info for most countries comes from the 2022 edition of UN World Population prospects.

Countries marked with a + indicate an anomaly in the UN data that has been ignored by me.

Country #1 wasn't collecting accurate government statistics during one of the worst famines in human history, and has made efforts to scrub and deny the historical record. The numbers should be considered a very broad estimate.

+23
Level ∞
Dec 29, 2016
On the other end of the spectrum, India has gained at least 9 million people in every year since 1960.
+5
Level 66
Dec 29, 2016
Is there a quiz for countries by Population Increase, and if not, can you make one?
+4
Level ∞
Dec 30, 2016
It wouldn't be quite the same since almost all countries are growing. There is this quiz however.
+2
Level 66
Dec 29, 2016
What I would like to know is Which of these are from people leaving the country and which ones are from Death?
+3
Level 82
Dec 30, 2016
It's all together, it's just the difference in numbers for whatever reason - deaths, emigration, or low fertility rate.
+5
Level 90
Dec 30, 2016
This is a really great quiz. Really had to think.
+4
Level 75
Dec 30, 2016
Maybe need to add another qualifier to the remarks - I'm sure Pakistan lost way more than all of these combined when Bangladesh declared independence
+18
Level 72
Dec 30, 2016
If you're going to go down that road then you open a can of worms. Czechoslovakia and Yugoslavia seperating, South Sudan gaining independence from Sudan etc etc.
+15
Level 75
Jan 29, 2019
That's why I said that it might warrant another caveat and not that Pakistan should be added
+13
Level ∞
Dec 30, 2016
Thanks. Added a caveat. The source data doesn't take that into account.
+10
Level 76
Dec 31, 2016
I think "genocide" might be more suitable for Cambodia than "warfare". The fighting in Cambodia killed far fewer people than were executed/starved as a result of the Khmer Rouge.
+7
Level 70
Jan 1, 2017
Rwanda should be warfare/genocide.
+5
Level ∞
Jan 2, 2017
Changed Cambodia and Rwanda to genocide.
+1
Level 89
Jun 9, 2021
The figure for Cambodia is about half the low end of estimates.
+3
Level 82
Oct 11, 2023
It's not the number of people killed, but the difference in population number. It includes births in the same period.
+5
Level 60
Jan 3, 2017
Funny how most of these are either former Soviet republics or communist countries.
+4
Level 70
Apr 9, 2017
Just naming the larger former USSR republics will get you five answers total.
+7
Level 75
Jul 14, 2021
Actually, it would be more accurate to say that they were recent conversions to capitalist countries. For a bunch of these, "transition to capitalism" would be a more telling cause than "demographics."
+8
Level 90
Jul 14, 2021
I'd say that the most accurate reason for the eastern European countries is "opened to easy emigration".
+1
Level 70
Jul 14, 2021
The United States also closed its borders to the socialist countries, just as the USSR closed its borders to the capitalist countries. It's a draw here.
+4
Level ∞
Oct 11, 2023
It's a combination of low fertility which started in the Communist years and then large emigration following the fall of the Iron Curtain.
+3
Level 70
Jul 14, 2021
not funny
+5
Level 56
Apr 9, 2017
Key to this is knowing which countries are entering Stage 5 of the Demographic Transition Model - mostly eastern Europe!
+1
Level 79
Oct 11, 2023
Ah yes, what plebeian wouldn't be familiar with the list of countries entering Stage 5 of the Demographic Transition Model?
+8
Level 82
Apr 15, 2018
Kinda telling that most of these countries were either under communist rule when this happened, or had recently been under communist rule. All in fact apart from Japan, Rwanda and Syria (and in Germany's case, only part of the country and over a decade earlier).
+8
Level 48
Mar 30, 2019
Not really. The majority of these were under capitalist systems. And China is doing quite well as far as population goes right now.
+4
Level 70
Jun 18, 2019
A couple of these were directly because of Communism. Quite a lot were because of a decline in birth rates following the dissolution of the USSR.
+1
Level 79
Jul 14, 2021
Quite true; the only countries that had no communist government in the recent past are perhaps Syria, Japan, Venezuela and Rwanda. And China isn't governed under a communist system anymore.
+1
Level 71
Aug 1, 2018
Are the Cambodian and Rwandan numbers mixed up? I thought around 800 000 were killed in the Rwandan genocide, and millions in the Cambodian.
+11
Level ∞
May 8, 2019
The numbers are accurate. Keep in mind that even while people are being killed, others are being born.
+1
Level 89
Jun 9, 2021
Not many were born in the Khmer Rouge camps though I thought. Relationships were tightly controlled along with every other minute of people's lives. Also, by 1980 many people had left Cambodia after Vietnam invaded and drove the Khmer Rouge from most areas.
+2
Level 72
May 16, 2019
Should the date for Syria not be ongoing rather than 2018? The fighting hasn't stopped, judging by the news reports, albeit ISIS have been all but wiped out territorially.
+1
Level 69
May 18, 2019
Yeah, I don't think there's any sign that Syrians are done running away from/and being murdered.
+5
Level ∞
May 18, 2019
I trust the numbers. Intuition fails us in regards to demographics. For example, you might think that the population of Iraq fell during its many conflicts. But you'd be wrong. Its population has increased monotonically.
+1
Level 50
Jun 18, 2019
wait but does it mean the difference between in 1959 and now? Its confusing because china's population grew though.
+6
Level 82
Jun 18, 2019
No it counts any episode of population loss within that date range. Chinese population dropped dramatically during the "Great Leap Forward"- following the adoption of Communist principles when the country was led by dangerously deluded people who put ideology before facts, local leaders were afraid to report that the forced land/labor redistributions that their socialist leaders commanded had not resulted in huge boosts to productivity. In fact the agricultural yields were much lower, but, afraid to report the truth, local bureaucrats reported that they were higher. A percentage of the yields had to be sent to Beijing, so this resulted in many provinces sending basically all of their food to the capital leaving nothing for themselves to eat. Some estimates of the death toll exceed 20 million people, but it's hard to say for sure. After the country recovered from the famine and economic recession that followed, there was a baby boom and the population began to rapidly recover.
+1
Level 71
Jul 14, 2021
This is a really good visualization of the impacts of the Great Leap Forward. You can very clearly see an enormous dip in China's life expectancy in the late 50s and early 60s, followed by a recovery to normal levels in the late 60s. (I recommend watching the rest of the video too, it's really interesting and a great showcase of human development in the past 2 centuries!)
+1
Level 79
Jun 18, 2019
What happened in Germany between 1974 and 1983?
+1
Level 50
Jun 24, 2019
This is probably only from East Germany. As for what happened then, I'm not sure.
+1
Level 79
Apr 3, 2020
Hmm. Does anybody know?
+4
Level ∞
Jun 8, 2021
Low birth rate for an extended period of time. Their population would still be falling if not for mass immigration.
+1
Level 78
Jun 13, 2021
Not sure whether this was a major factor but after a period of mass immigration, (West) Germany imposed a recruitment ban in 1973. Almost all of the refugees from the East went to West Germany so that doesn't explain it.
+1
Level 57
Jun 18, 2019
THIS was tough!
+1
Level 50
Dec 23, 2019
Damn it missed georgia
+2
Level 85
Jun 8, 2021
How many of the episodes labeled "Demographics" could be more specifically categorized as "Migration" (lots of the former SSRs), and how many as "Fertility" (Japan)?
+3
Level 58
Jul 14, 2021
In most of Eastern Europe (Ukraine, Balkans, Baltics) its both

Hungary and Russia are losing population exclusively through low birth rates as they've both have positive net migration since the 90s. Germany also has bad birth rates and a natural decline but this has been significantly offset by migration now

Kazakhstan has crazy high birth rates, the decline was due to Russians mass migrating to Russia after the fall of the USSR

In Georgia its almost exclusively migration, they lost very few people due to negative natural increase but are entering negative natural increase again

Latvia is officially the hardest hit, they lost almost a third of their population since 1991 and its still going, but Bosnia is probably doing even worse since they very likely dipped under 3M already. Ukraine is catching up fast

+1
Level 85
Jun 8, 2021
Interesting -- thought Georgia would be too small. Shouldn't it be war and demographics? South Ossetia and Abkhazia conflicts must have contributed somewhat to the decline.
+1
Level 84
Jun 8, 2021
That's the question I was going to ask. The caveat includes "Only one episode per country". So it may be that the two conflicts together reduced the population less than the overall demographic decline. And the date starts in 1989, before both conflicts and closer to the collapse of the USSR.
+1
Level 56
Jul 14, 2021
Did you have consideration for countries whose territory was ceded to another state e.g. Sudan?
+2
Level ∞
Jul 15, 2021
Yes, read the caveats.
+1
Level 53
Jul 14, 2021
Idk how I got everything except the two obvious ones, Afghanistan and Syria...
+1
Level 40
Jul 15, 2021
Cambodia is not a genocide...
+6
Level ∞
Jul 15, 2021
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cambodian_genocide
+1
Level 73
Oct 15, 2023
Cambodia is... interesting. Most of the people who were killed were not targeted for their nationality, ethnicity, race, nor religion, but "genocide" certainly gets the scale of the crimes and policies employed by the Khmer Rouge against their own people across in a way that I'm not sure another English word could. And as Quizmaster linked, it's commonly referred to as a genocide.

I personally don't know if I'd call it a genocide, but it's not necessarily wrong. Genocide was certainly a part of it (while not the main focus of their violence, the Khmer Rouge *did* intentionally target ethnic minorities.)

+4
Level 60
Jul 15, 2021
Was really bummed when Hungary wasn't to famine.
+1
Level 35
Apr 2, 2023
sad ukraine
+1
Level 79
Oct 11, 2023
Got the last one (Kuwait) with one second left!!
+1
Level 85
Oct 11, 2023
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographics_of_Kuwait seems to say that Kuwait's annual populations were:

1989: 2,084,000

1990: 2,088,000

1991: 2,031,000

1992: 1,924,000

Am I reading that wrong? I don't see a 1,150,000 decrease during 1990-1991.

+1
Level 79
Oct 11, 2023
The UN source data that's used in the quiz show a very obvious dip to about 1.5 million around 1990 because of the Iraqi invasion and ensuing Gulf War. The data you found on Wikipedia looks like it's just for births and deaths and so doesn't account for population changes due to other causes. So no, you didn't read it incorrectly, it's just not the right data for the quiz.
+1
Level ∞
Oct 11, 2023
Perhaps Kuwait is counting citizens, and the UN is counting residents.

I think the UN is more likely correct here.

Side note: The quality of Wikipedia's data is getting worse and worse lately. I hope they get some competition. Their budget gets bigger and bigger while the core product gets worse.

+1
Level 71
Oct 11, 2023
Lebanon's been having a war since 2015? Or is it talking about their involvement (especially Hezbollah) in the Syrian Civil War? Either way, I'm surprised that they've lost population--I thought the Syrian refugee crisis would have made their population swell.
+1
Level 79
Oct 11, 2023
The data show a big population spike of about 1.5 million around 2010 that I'm guessing represents waves of refugees from the Syrian Civil War. It's hard to tell what the decline since then is from, but looks like it's mostly because of emigration.
+1
Level ∞
Oct 11, 2023
Changed the reason to "return of refugees" as that seems the most likely reason.
+1
Level 60
Oct 11, 2023
I missed one and it was China.
+1
Level 75
Oct 11, 2023
Can't believe I missed Romania...
+1
Level 89
Oct 12, 2023
Serbia lost 1,13 million people between 1991. - 2022.
+1
Level 69
Oct 12, 2023
Discussion about genocide in Bosnia in 3...2...1...
+4
Level 79
Oct 12, 2023
What? You're like the only person who has said anything about Bosnia.
+1
Level 68
Dec 4, 2023
Why no Ireland?
+2
Level 78
Dec 20, 2023
It's since 1950