The highest death number in the first half of the year was in January when it was 3 001 (93 deaths or 3.2 % fewer than in January a year earlier) while the lowest was in June when it was 2 124 (174 deaths or 7.6 % fewer than in June a year ago).
While the decline is death rates is clearly welcome, less encouraging is the fact that the number of births keeps decreasing and still makes up less than a half of the number of deaths. The number of births registered in the first six months of the year – 7 051 – is 975 children or 12.1 % smaller than that recorded in the corresponding period of 2022.
consequently in the first half of 2023, due to natural population change, the population of Latvia declined by 7 240 people.
During the first six months of 2023, 4 157 marriages were registered, and compared to the corresponding period a year ago marriage number has dropped by 115 or 2.7 %. Moreover, it still lags behind the number recorded before the pandemic when in the first six months of 2019 more than 4.7 thousand marriages were concluded.
On 1 July 2023 Latvia provisionally had a population of 1 million 882.6 thousand, which is 8.4 thousand people fewer than on 1 January 2023.
