Overview
Key figures and core demographic trends for Costa Rica.
Population
5.2M
Fertility Rate
1.32
Life Expectancy
81.0y
GDP / capita
$20K
Pop. Growth
0.45%
Net Migration
1K
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Provisional fertility nowcast
Source: National Statistical Offices or Ministries of Health / Interior · compiled by @BirthGauge. Full nowcast table · provisional, may be revised.
YTD births (3 mo) -0.9% YoY
TFR 2024
1.12
TFR 2025
1.12
TFR 2026
1.11
Births YTD (3 mo)
10.7K
Rates per 1,000 people per year — not absolute birth or death counts. When the birth rate exceeds the death rate, natural increase is positive (before migration).
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Economy
National accounts and international trade.
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Exports & imports
International trade for Costa Rica — product exports and imports from OEC / BACI.
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Migration
Net migration, permits, and the foreign-born population of Costa Rica, plus where migrants come from and where the diaspora lives.
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OECD definition: unemployed share of the labour force among native-born vs foreign-born residents aged 15–64. National offices (e.g. Statistics Sweden) may publish slightly different figures for other age bands or months — we show the internationally comparable OECD series. Latest: native-born 8.4%, foreign-born 5.5% (2024).
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Largest foreign-born communities in Costa Rica by country of birth (2024) · arrow shows change since 2010.
Source: UN DESA International Migrant Stock 2024
Top destinations for people born in Costa Rica who now live abroad (2024) · arrow shows change since 2010.
Source: UN DESA International Migrant Stock 2024
Demography
Age structure, projections, and population composition.
That is 50% smaller than in 2025. The animation freezes the latest fertility rate. It is a model, not an official forecast. UN World Population Prospects 2024 medium is 3.8 million in 2100 — higher than this run (low 2.5 million, high 5.5 million). UN lets fertility change over the century and includes some migration; this run does not.
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Mortality & longevity
Life expectancy, death rates and child mortality as far back as vital registration and historical reconstructions allow (from 1960), plus infant and maternal mortality.
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Pre-1960 life expectancy and long child-mortality series are from Our World in Data (Riley, Zijdeman et al., HMD, UN). Historic crude death rates cover countries in the Human Mortality Database only — Sweden from 1751, France from 1816, and so on. Crude rates are not age-standardized.
Health, education & infrastructure
Spending, capacity and attainment. Coverage is thinner than for demographic series — most figures come from periodic surveys rather than continuous registration.
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Society, housing & beliefs
Family, crime, housing and religion indicators.
Homicide rate
17.7
Divorce rate
—
Births outside marriage
—
Home ownership
—
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Why this country’s demographics matter
Age structure, fertility gaps, and migration change budgets and electorates. This is the constraint, not a manifesto.
National fertility, age structure, and migration set the size of the next workforce and the next electorate.
- Period TFR versus replacement (~2.1) is the first number — then who is having the children, if an official split exists.
- Neighbors on the same World Bank series are the “ah, they have X children” chart.
- 2040 workers are mostly already born; TFR shows up around 2060. Who works, retirement age, and migration move 2040.
- Family policy elsewhere (France, Hungary, Korea) has not returned a high-income country to replacement in recent decades.
The longer argument — pensions, schools, coalitions, and what migration does and does not offset — is on why birthrates matter. The case for a pronatal culture as the response is on what's the solution?. To turn this country’s series into a memo you can forward, open the briefing builder — generate a draft, write it yourself, then expand any paragraph.