The Statistical Committee says that the figure of 2,928,914 also includes those people who usually live in the country, but have been absent from it for up to a year.
It is by about 90,000 people less than Armenia’s permanent population was according to a similar census conducted in 2011. The population that was physically in Armenia at the time of the census in 2022 was by about 233,000 less than 12 years ago.
Last year’s census of the population was third to be conducted in Armenia since the country gained independence in 1991. Originally it was due to be held in 2020, but had to postpone twice – first until 2021 and then until 2022 – because of the COVID-19 pandemic.
Specialists in Armenia have not yet done any in-depth analysis of the results of the latest census of the population, pending the final data to be presented by the authorities. But some demographers already see a troubling pattern.
This is the first time in independent Armenia that the number of the country’s permanent population, though slightly, but dropped below 3 million.
Candidate of historical sciences, ethno-geographer Artashes Boyajian, who was involved in both previous census of the population in 2001 and 2011 as a supervising enumerator, says that whereas until 2018 the population of Armenia was decreasing due to outmigration, it is the declining birthrate that became a problem afterwards.
“After 2018, in a number of provinces of the Republic of Armenia, in particular, in Lori, for the first time a negative natural growth balance, that is when the number of births is lower than the number of deaths, was registered. The same was registered in the Shirak province in 2020 as well as in a number of other provinces of the republic,” Boyajian told RFE/RL’s Armenian Service.
The current government of Armenia and its predecessors have set targets for the population of Armenia. In 2020, Prime Minister Nikol Pashinian unveiled the nation’s strategy until 2050, talking about the goal of increasing the country’s permanent population to at least 5 million people.
According to Boyajian, despite this lofty goal, the State has failed to implement any serious demographic policy aimed at its realization.
“In the period under review some steps have been taken to promote population growth, but it has no qualitative and quantitative effect,” the specialist said.
Declining birthrates are currently a pattern typical for most former Soviet states given the demographic decline brought on by the collapse of the USSR in 1991 and ensuing social and economic hardships of the populations in newly independent countries for years to come.
The United Nations projects that Armenia’s population by 2050 will fall to 2.6 million.