RIGA, Aug. 13 (Xinhua) -- Latvia continued to see negative demographic trends in the first half of 2025, with more people dying than were born in the first six months of the year, the latest statistics show.
According to data released by the national statistics office on Wednesday, the number of births recorded in the first half of this year fell by 13.2 percent from the same period a year ago, to 5,660.
Meanwhile, Latvia recorded 13,077 deaths in the first half of 2025, down 4.8 percent from the first six months of last year.
Marriage registration, on the other hand, increased by 23.9 percent year-on-year, with 4,137 couples tying the knot in the first half of 2025.
Data for 2024 shows that 73.3 percent of Latvian households did not have any children. These included one-person households (38.6 percent), couples with no children (17.8 percent), and households of other types without children (16.9 percent).
Meanwhile, a quarter of Latvian households had at least one child, or a young adult of up to 24 years old who was still studying.
At the beginning of 2025, children up to 17 years old made up 18.5 percent of Latvia's population. Since the beginning of 2016, the number of children in Latvia has decreased by 8,800, or 2.5 percent.
At the beginning of July 2025, Latvia had a population of around 1.83 million, according to the national statistics office. ■
