Cuba: The Country That Is Running Out of People
By Eloy Viera Cañive (El Toque)
HAVANA TIMES – Cuba is facing, perhaps for the first time in its recent history, three simultaneous demographic crises:
a) a sustained decline in birth rates;
b) a massive exodus that is driving out its young and skilled population; and
c) accelerated aging that is fundamentally transforming the country’s social structure.
This diagnosis is neither new nor isolated. For years it has been described by sociologists and demographers—both independent and those linked to official institutions—and the problem is so evident that it has even been acknowledged in what Napoleon would have called “the Assembly of the Mute,” today’s National Assembly of People’s Power.
At its regular session on December 18, 2025, the authorities confirmed that Cuba’s population declined again this year and that, according to current projections, by 2050 the country will have barely 7.7 million inhabitants—about 2 million more than the population recorded in 1950, a century earlier.
The result is a country that is no longer reproducing itself, that is rapidly losing its labor force, and whose population pyramid is inverting at a pace comparable only to nations that have gone through prolonged wars or deep structural crises.
Much has been said about the economic and social consequences derived from these combined crises.
A shrinking labor force
When the population declines and ages, the labor market inevitably contracts. The productive base comes to depend on an ever-smaller group of young people of working age. In Cuba, this phenomenon is even more critical because it is not driven solely by natural dynamics, but also by induced causes: sustained emigration, a lack of incentives to form families, and the general precariousness of life in the country.
A country with an insufficient labor force produces fewer goods and services, loses innovative capacity, and sees its international competitiveness weakened. As a result, the economy enters—or, in Cuba’s case, remains trapped in—a vicious cycle: fewer workers → lower productivity → lower wages → greater emigration → even fewer workers.
Structural crisis of the pension system
As a country ages, the number of dependent people rises rapidly: more pensioners, more citizens with chronic illnesses, and greater demand for long-term care.
This growth of the vulnerable population places unsustainable pressure on social security systems that, in Cuba’s case, are already weakened by a lack of resources and by economic decisions that have left retirees with income levels far below any international poverty standard.
After the increase approved in October 2025, the minimum pension in Cuba is 4,000 CUP; at the current official exchange rate—1 USD equals 410 CUP—this means that a pensioner lives on less than 10 USD per month (that is, about 30 cents a day). According to the World Bank, the extreme poverty line is set at 2.15 USD per day. By that measure, hundreds of thousands of Cubans live on incomes seven times lower than what is considered the minimum threshold for being classified as “extremely poor.”
The deterioration is not limited to the pensions. The country’s systemic crisis has forced the State to progressively dismantle the social protection mechanisms it once proclaimed as its greatest achievements. The rationed basic foods, arrive irregularly and with increasingly insufficient products; as the monologue that made the comic Pánfilo famous would put it, December’s rice has long since become May’s rice.
But beyond their economic and social effects, demographic transformations also carry a political cost: an aging, dependent, and impoverished society tends to be more vulnerable to authoritarianism and less capable of driving profound change.
The political dimension: stability, governability, and authoritarian risk
An aging population tends to be more conservative—not always in ideological terms, but in its willingness to embrace change. Societies with a predominantly elderly demographic base usually prioritize stability over transformation, among other reasons because protest and social mobilization rarely come from older age groups.
It is hard to say, but modern political dynamics show that the energy to drive profound change—protests, civic movements, social reorganization—usually comes from youth.
If anyone doubts it, one need only observe the immobility that the so-called “historic generation” has brought into Cuban politics: a political gerontocracy that has perpetuated itself for decades, not through social legitimacy, but through generational exhaustion and the elimination of its successors.
The pronounced aging of any society favors authoritarian regimes like Cuba’s, which encounter less resistance in a society where young people are scarce or leave for abroad. In any country, it is young people who push history forward; when they are absent, the collective capacity to demand change, organize politically, and defend public spaces for participation diminishes.
The decline and aging of Cuba’s population is not merely a statistical fact, nor an automatic parallel with aging societies in the developed world. It is the most visible manifestation of a systemic crisis that redefines the country’s destiny: it affects production, consumption, fiscal sustainability, social cohesion, and above all, the possibility of political transformation.
It is sad to say, but the official figures—likely downplaying the true severity—show that Cuba’s greatest challenge is no longer ideological or strictly political: it is demographic.
A country without people ceases to be a country, and a nation that loses its members risks dissolving, unless there are strong cultural or religious bonds that preserve its continuity (as has happened with other peoples throughout history). In Cuba’s case, even that identity component has been manipulated and eroded for decades.
The alteration of cultural traits, the deliberate confusion of concepts, and the dismantling of citizenship have contributed to making the demographic crisis appear increasingly irreversible.
If Cuba’s political landscape does not change, there is a real risk that in 50 years the Cuban nation will no longer exist as we know it, but only as an ever-diminishing remnant: an aging, impoverished population trapped in the prolongation of a regime that presents itself as mutable in form, but eternal in essence.
First published in Spanish by El Toque and translated and posted in English by Havana Times.