The number of births in Macau fell by 4.4% in the first nine months of the year, with the territory recording the lowest number of newborns in almost half a century.
© Lusa
06/11/2026
by
Lusa
O number of births in Macau fell 4.4% in the first nine months of the year, it was announced today, after the region had registered in 2025 the lowest number of newborns in almost half a century.
According to official data released by the Directorate of Statistics and Censuses (DSEC), 2,037 babies were born in Macau between January and September, less 93 than in the same period last year.
The territory recorded, throughout the year 2025, 2,871 newborns, the lowest number of births since 1978, when the city, then still under Portuguese administration, registered 2,407 newborns.
However, while in 1978 Macau had less than 249,000 inhabitants, by the end of September the Chinese semi-autonomous region already had a population of about 688 thousand people.
In addition to the number of births, which decreased by 2025 for the sixth consecutive year, the fertility rate, an important indicator for predicting population evolution, continues to fall in Macao.
Macau ended 2025 with 0.47 births for each woman between 15 and 49 years, less 0.11 than in the previous year.
Fertility in the territory has been declining consecutively for 11 years to the lowest value since DSEC started calculating this rate in 2001 and far from the value required for the replacement of generations (2,1).
According to estimates from the United Nations Department of Economic and Social Affairs, the region had in 2024 the lowest fertility rate in the world, followed by Singapore, with 0.95 births per woman.
Although there are fewer births, the population of Macau increased by 1,400 in the third quarter of 2026, mainly due to immigration, with the entry of 639 people from mainland China and the granting of residence to 290 foreigners.
The elderly population first surpassed that of young people in 2023, with the Macau Government predicting a “super low birth rate” still this decade and close to a quarter of the elderly population by 2041.
The data released today also show that Macau recorded a fall in suicide deaths in the first nine months of the year, after the Chinese region ended 2025 with a record number of suicides.
According to official data released by DSEC, there were at least 58 deaths by suicide between January and September, less 14 than in the same period last year.
DSEC stressed, however, that this data was compiled on the basis of medical certificates of death and does not include the number of deaths judged later, together by the coroners and the judicial police, as suicide.
Macau recorded 91 suicide cases in 2025, five more than in the previous year and the highest number since the beginning of the registers in 1990 before the transition from Portugal to China.