Information provided by the Central Statistical Office (CSO) shows that Poland is facing a serious demographic problem. During a press conference, CSO President Dominik Rozkrut announced that at the end of 2022, Poland’s population would reach 37 million 767 thousand people. According to the CSO’s analyses, last year the fewest children were born in Poland since the Second World War. 

“We estimate that the number of births was 305 thousand, 27 thousand fewer than last year. The number of deaths amounted to 448,000 and was also lower than last year – by 72,000, the CSO president said.

„This means that the population decreased by 141 thousand compared to the previous year. The decline has continued uninterrupted since 2012, and the increase in mortality, caused by the pandemic, has clearly exacerbated the negative demographic trends”, he added.

Admittedly, the loss was less than in 2021, but still larger than in the years before the pandemic outbreak. Dominik Rozkrut elaborated that for every 10,000 people in the population, 37 people were lost in 2022, compared to 47 in 2021, the year of the pandemic. Comparing this to the last year before the pandemic, there was a loss of seven people. The change in population is mainly influenced by the birth rate, which has remained negative since 2012.

According to the CSO, the number of births was 143,000 lower than the number of deaths, and the natural increase rate was minus 3.8 compared to minus 4.9 in 2021 and 0.9 in 2019. During his speech, the CSO president also conveyed that the National Census data showed that the number of families in Poland on the day of the census, 31 March 2021, was 10,159,000,300. He stated that this represents a decrease of 813,200 families compared to the previous census in 2011.

He also reported data on marriages and relations. In Poland, 32.8 % of families are marriages or non- formalized relationships without children, 44.6 % – marriages or non-formalised relationships with children, and 22 % are lone parents.

Adrian Andrzejewski