🇬🇱 Greenland population is seen falling 14% by 2050
The national population projection 2026, indicates that the Greenland-born segment of the population is expected to decline by approximately 14% by 2050. However, there is significant uncertainty in these calculations due to the limited size of the population.
The decline is, however, smaller than the 20 percent indicated by the 2024 and 2025 projections. In addition to incorporating new data for 2025, the difference is due to an updated model for re-immigration. The previous model applied a limited time horizon for re-immigration, resulting in a conservative estimate. The new model does not impose a similar restriction and better reflects the observed behaviour in recent years.
The population projection shows the results of model calculations that, based on Greenland’s population gender and age structure as of January 1, 2026, as well as historical experiences, describe possible development scenarios towards 2050.
As with the other alternatives, only the part of the population living and born in Greenland is projected. The part of the population born outside Greenland is assumed to remain constant with the same gender and age distribution as in 2026 in all future years.
The large cohorts from the 1960s will, in the coming years, reach ages with higher mortality, which is expected to be lower than the mortality experienced by previous generations at the same age. The average age of the population will increase from 35.7 in 2026 to 39.7 in 2050.
While about 800 children were born annually ten years ago, it is expected that in ten years, with the current low fertility rate, fewer than 600 children will be born annually.
Due to the opposing trends for children and the elderly, the demographic dependency ratio will not be significantly different from what has been observed in the past 40 years.
Regional projections
When the population is divided into regions, the uncertainty in demographic projections increases significantly. Only for Nuuk and possibly the largest primary settlements can calculations be reliably made using the employed method. For smaller localities, the population size is often too small to yield reliable results over a long-term horizon beyond a few years.
Nevertheless, the Statistics Bank provides detailed projection results, offering a wide range of applications. Users can, for instance, aggregate results into custom-defined age groups instead of being limited to fixed groupings.
The main scenario of the projection assumes a continued decline in fertility, decreasing mortality, and relatively high net emigration. These calculations are based on recent trends and developments, including domestic migration patterns.The figure illustrates the development of the proportion of the Greenland-born population by municipalities from 1999 to 2050.
Caveats
How many people will live in Greenland in 10, 20, or 30 years largely depends on political and economic decisions. For this reason, the regional projections are limited to the Greenland-born segment of the population.
Individuals born outside Greenland are held constant throughout the projection period until 2050. This poses particular challenges for Nuuk, where the number of individuals born outside the Kingdom of Denmark has doubled in just the past three years.
Although Nuuk has experienced substantial population growth over the past five years, it has only been possible to recruit labor internally from Greenland to a limited extent. This has necessitated the recruitment of labor from outside the country.When evaluating the results presented here—as well as those in the Statistics Bank (http://bank.stat.gl)—it is important to consider the potential effects of new initiatives, such as the new airports. These may include impacts from tourism, construction, service industries, and similar developments.It is crucial to emphasize that population projections are not forecasts but rather calculation examples illustrating how the population may develop under specific assumptions.
Population Projection for Greenland-born Residents
To have a robust basis for calculations, the projections focus solely on individuals born in Greenland. The national projections indicate a population decline by 2050, primarily due to falling birth rates, continued net emigration to Denmark, and an increasing number of deaths among the large birth cohorts from the 1960s. These cohorts will gradually be replaced by smaller ones in the 2030s
Previous projections
Since 2012, all of Statistics Greenland’s projections have been available in the Statistical Bank, and to make comparisons easier, they are compiled in the table https://bank.stat.gl/BEEPALL.Figure 7 shows the projected age distribution in 2026 for the part of the population born and residing in Greenland.
Figure 7. Age distribution 2026, from previous projections
Figure 4. Regiongroups
The regional population projections divide the country into four regional groups:
The projections are conducted independently of each other, leading to minor differences in the results. For instance, the projection for Nuuk City and the Capital Region, divided by settlement size, shows a difference of 158 people in 2050.
For each region, the annual number of out-migrants is calculated based on recent years’ experiences. The out-migrants are then distributed to in-migration regions, also based on historical patterns.
These tables has been updated:
BEEP26 Population Projections, 2026
BEEP26CALC Population Account1999 – 2050
BEEP26EMR Migration rates 1999 – 2049
BEEP26FERT Fertility 1999 – 2049
BEEP26FLYT Migration rates1999 – 2049
BEEP26MORT Mortality 1999 – 2049
BEEPALL All projections 2012-2026
Originally published by Statistics Greenland.
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