Compared to the beginning of 2023, when there were 361,000 children in Latvia, or 19.2% of the population aged under 17, the number of children has decreased by 5,000.
Since the beginning of 2016, the total number of children has increased by 4,000, or 1.1%, and the proportion by 1.1 percentage points (352 000, or 17.9% of children in 2016).
At the beginning of 2024, 96.3% of all children were Latvian citizens, 0.5% - Latvian non-citizens and 3.2% - citizens of other countries.
By ethnicity, 70% of the children were Latvian, 12.7% were Russian, 2.1% were Ukrainian, 0.6% were Polish, 0.5% were Belarusian and 14.1% were of other ethnicities.
94.7% of children were born in Latvia, followed by 2% of children born in Ukraine, 1.3% in the United Kingdom, 0.3% in Ireland and Russia.
At the beginning of this year, the highest proportion of children was in the Riga region (19.6%) and the lowest in Latgale (16.5%). In the regions, the share of children varied from 13.5% in the Krāslava region to 30.5% in the Mārupe region.
In 2023, 2.2 thousand children emigrated from Latvia, which was 13.5% of the total emigrated population (in 2022 - 22.6%).
In turn, 2.1 thousand children immigrated, representing 11.4% of the total immigrant population (13.2% in 2022, when the increase in immigration was accounted for by Ukrainian nationals).
At the beginning of 2024, 7.1 thousand or almost 2% of minors of Ukrainian nationality who had fled as refugees lived in Latvia. 2.2 thousand were preschool children (0-6 years) and 4.9 thousand were school-age children (7-17 years).
