Since the 1990s, Belarus’s population has been declining until 2010. From 2010 to 2019, the population plateaued and increased slightly going from 9.42 million to 9.45 million. The population began declining again from 2019 to 2020. According to current projections, the population will fall to 7.45 million people by 2099.
The population growth rate for 2020 is -0.03%. While this rate is small, it is expected to increase in the coming decades. The fertility rate in Hungary is low at 1.71 births per woman. The positive net migration every year is not enough to make up for the lack of babies being born, unlike other countries with low fertility rates but are still seeing population growth.
Belarus is one of the fastest-shrinking countries in the world.
Across the entire country, the majority of the population increase recorded between 2001 and 2011 is as a result of immigration into Belarus - the number of people living in Austria but born elsewhere increased by 35% over the past decade. Belarus estimates that 81% of its population had no migration background, while about 19% had at least one parent of migrant background. There are estimated to be 415,000 descendants of foreign-born immigrants in the country.
The slight negative growth of Belarus is expected to continue declining in the years to come and become somewhat more drastic. In the next 30 years, it is projected that the rate of decrease will nearly double from -0.34% in 2020 to -0.61% in 2050. These projections state that the actual number of citizens in Serbia will decrease by more than a million during this time with the population being 8,703,942 in 2020, 8,355,445 in 2030, 7,912,824 in 2040, and 7,447,023 by 2050.
| Belarus Population (as of 10/15/2024) | 9,039,750 |
| Last UN Estimate (July 1, 2024) | 9,056,700 |
| Births per Day | 174 |
| Deaths per Day | 326 |
| Migrations per Day | -9 |
| Net Change per Day | -160 |
| Population Change Since Jan. 1 | -46,080 |
Net decrease of 1 person every 9 minutes
Population estimates based on interpolation of data from World Population Prospects
| One birth every 8.28 minutes | |
| One death every 4.42 minutes | |
| One emigrant every 160 minutes | |
| Net loss of one person every 9 minutes |
City | 2024 Pop. |
|---|---|
| Minsk | 1,742,124 |
| Gomel | 480,951 |
| Mahilyow | 369,200 |
| Vitebsk | 342,700 |
| Hrodna | 317,365 |
| Brest | 300,715 |
| Babruysk | 220,517 |
| Baranovichi | 168,772 |
| Barysaw | 143,919 |
| Pinsk | 130,777 |
Belarus is a landlocked, east-European nation that covers 80,153 squares miles (207,600 square kilometers) of land, sharing borders with Russia, Ukraine, Poland, Lithuania, and Latvia. For the most part, the land itself is either flat and marshy, or forest and the country has several major streams including the Neman, the Pripyat, and the Dnieper. Using the 2017 population of 9.5 million, the population density of Belarus is 118.5 people per square mile (45.8 people per square kilometer), which ranks 132nd in the world.
Three-quarters of the population of Belarus live in urban areas and there are many significantly sized cities. Minsk is the largest city in Belarus and is also its capital. The population of Minsk is 1.9 million people. Minsk was founded in 1067 A.D. Currently, Minsk and Belarus, in general, is leading ex-USSR states by way of urbanization. The second-largest city, with a population over half a million, is Homel, the administrative center of Belarus, which was notably affected by radioactive contamination from the Chernobyl disaster in 1986. Other cities with populations over 200,000 include Mahilyow, Vitsyebsk, Grodno, Brest, and Babruysk.
Year | Population | Change | Density (/km²) | Population Rank | Density Rank |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2024 | 9,056,700 | -0.82% | 45 | 100 | 168 |
| 2023 | 9,115,680 | -0.78% | 45 | 100 | 168 |
| 2020 | 9,350,940 | -0.9% | 46 | 97 | 164 |
| 2019 | 9,435,420 | -0.47% | 47 | 96 | 163 |
| 2018 | 9,480,030 | -0.17% | 47 | 94 | 162 |
| 2017 | 9,495,790 | -0.03% | 47 | 94 | 161 |
| 2015 | 9,487,290 | -0.01% | 47 | 93 | 161 |
| 2010 | 9,490,750 | -0.37% | 47 | 89 | 158 |
| 2005 | 9,667,840 | -0.66% | 48 | 82 | 151 |
| 2000 | 9,991,310 | -0.41% | 49 | 78 | 147 |
| 1995 | 10,197,500 | 0.02% | 50 | 71 | 140 |
| 1990 | 10,186,300 | 0.48% | 50 | 68 | 133 |
| 1985 | 9,944,190 | 0.7% | 49 | 65 | 129 |
| 1980 | 9,603,170 | 0.59% | 47 | 62 | 122 |
| 1975 | 9,324,280 | 0.68% | 46 | 60 | 120 |
| 1970 | 9,014,900 | 0.76% | 44 | 57 | 115 |
| 1965 | 8,679,930 | 1.12% | 43 | 57 | 113 |
| 1960 | 8,208,000 | 1.66% | 40 | 53 | 109 |
| 1955 | 7,560,680 | 1.19% | 37 | 51 | 109 |
Year | Population | Change | Density (/km²) | Population Rank | Density Rank |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2024 | 9,056,700 | -0.82% | 45 | 100 | 168 |
| 2025 | 8,997,600 | -0.77% | 44 | 100 | 169 |
| 2030 | 8,687,630 | -0.7% | 43 | 102 | 170 |
| 2035 | 8,372,270 | -0.74% | 41 | 104 | 176 |
| 2040 | 8,064,470 | -0.75% | 40 | 110 | 178 |
| 2045 | 7,763,470 | -0.76% | 38 | 113 | 180 |
| 2050 | 7,453,550 | -0.81% | 37 | 114 | 183 |
| 2055 | 7,114,780 | -0.93% | 35 | 115 | 185 |
| 2060 | 6,753,790 | -1.04% | 33 | 116 | 187 |
| 2065 | 6,392,850 | -1.09% | 32 | 118 | 189 |
| 2070 | 6,044,480 | -1.11% | 30 | 118 | 190 |
| 2075 | 5,715,780 | -1.11% | 28 | 122 | 190 |
| 2080 | 5,407,680 | -1.1% | 27 | 127 | 194 |
| 2085 | 5,122,140 | -1.08% | 25 | 128 | 195 |
| 2090 | 4,857,560 | -1.05% | 24 | 128 | 196 |
| 2095 | 4,603,210 | -1.07% | 23 | 131 | 197 |
Belarus, a Eurasian landlocked country bordered by Russia, Poland, Ukraine, Latvia, and Lithuania.
Ethnic Belarusians constitute approximately 84% of the total population of Belarus. Russians are the next largest ethnic group at 8% of the population, followed by Poles (3%) and Ukrainians (1.5%). While Russian is the official and main language of the country, Belarusian is also widely spoken. Yiddish, Polish, and Ukrainian are also spoken.
59% of the population claims Eastern Orthodox Christianity as their faith; Roman Catholicism and Protestantism are practiced among some of the percentage of residents. Judaism and Baha’i faiths are also practiced by about 4% of the Belarus population. Belarus has no official religion, but under its constitution it allows for freedom of worship and religious practice as long as they pose no harm to social or governmental institutions.
Recent economic growth in the area has largely been fueled by foreign investment in recent years. The success of the economy in Belarus is also closely tied with economic success in Russia because of their long term ties with the area. The government has a heavy hand in most all economic divisions and it is very difficult for small businesses to flourish. Major industries in Belarus include energy (renewable energy, oil, natural gas, oil shale, and electricity), automobile manufacturing, iron, and metal ore mining, defense, banking, agriculture, technology, and tourism.
The President of Belarus, Alexander Lukashenko, has been in power since 1994 and has given the country one of the worst human rights records in Europe with rigged elections giving the people of the country little control. Monopolies run the major business sectors in Belarus, and even though they are no longer a republic of Russia, the Russian government still very much exerts its influence over the area.
Belarus is a former republic of the Soviet Union, but has been an independent nation since 1991 after the downfall of Russia, and applying for EU membership in 2009, which risked severing political ties with Russia- whom they have been historically dependent upon for energy. Belarus had the largest refugee population in Europe just twenty years ago, accounting for 7.5% of its population. 300,000 people left the country in the 90's, one-fifth of which had a higher education.