He National Statistics Institute (INE) of Uruguay will present on December 10 the results of the 2023 Censuswith which it will be verified that Uruguayan population growth is stagnant. Residents in the country are 3,444,263, which means that the increase compared to 2011 (when the last study was done) was only 1%. There are other phenomena that arise from the analysis of the data. Without the foreign population (about 60,000 people), the inhabitants of Uruguay would have been below the 2011 Census.
“The census was one of the great milestones, due to the complexity of carrying out this operation and the richness of the data it will provide for the next government. I would say that it is going to be one of the great public policy planning instruments of the next government,” said the director of the INE, Diego Aboalin statements recorded by The Country.
The final data will conclude something that has already been warned by experts: The country is going through a “population decline”. “Uruguay is in a very important transition or inflection process. In the last three years until 2023 we have had more deaths than births in the country. In other words, we are in a process of negative natural growth.. “This had not happened before in the history of the country,” he said.
The primary results of the 2023 Census that were presented a year ago show that another phenomenon is registered in the stagnation of the Uruguayan population: the number of people who left the country in the last 12 years was at least 100,000.
“We Uruguayans keep leaving. The Uruguayan has a structural component of wanting to leave at some point. That also generates a flow that (is not compensated) even if immigrants come,” analyzed demographer Mariana Paredes, interviewed on the program. This is how it goesby Radio Carve. Although the INE did not disclose those figures, demographers can access that data through a “compensating equation.”
The demographer Martin Koolhaaswhich specializes in immigration issues, made this calculation also estimating the number of Uruguayans who returned to the country in the period and clarified that it is a preliminary figure. The studies of the migration They are divided into four components. One of the disaggregated ones refers to emigration, which “seems to have increased quite a bit” in Uruguay in that period. Meanwhile, the “return immigration” –Uruguayans who lived abroad and returned to the country– were close to 40,000 in these years.
Preliminary data indicate that immigrants living in Uruguay They are 61,810. If a ranking of arrivals between 2011 and 2023 is made, it is led by Venezuelans (27%), followed by Argentines (22%) y Cubans (20%).
Another conclusion from the primary data of the 2023 Census is that The country looks more and more like a “shell”due to the internal migration that exists in the country and that results in a growth of the coastal departments.
Silver Citylocated in the department of Saint Joseph 30 kilometers from Montevideo, had “explosive growth” in its population. This increase is explained by people who work in the capital, who settled in that place and travel every day. “It is part of the metropolitan area, which we are used to including part of Canelones, but it is also extending to San José,” said Aboal. The final population number for this area will be surprising.
Another change in trend that the census will reflect will be how the Uruguayan population moved within the country, a movement that turns it into a kind of “shell.” “The map of Uruguay in terms of population density is going to change and it is going to be one of the most interesting elements,” said the director of the INE. “The edges become denser and the central areas less dense. That is more marked towards the south,” he explained.
