Throughout his convinced story, Colombia has faced numerous challenges. Many of those challenges – including Poverty, inequality, violence or loss of biodiversity– They persist, while a few disappeared as the one that became a real state problem.
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Just look at what was said at the end of 1961 by then President Alberto Lleras Camargo. In a speech delivered in the Golden Hall of the Military Club in Bogotá, the president spoke of “The great threat of this time, which consists of the demographic explosion, which among us is no longer a rigorous statistical hypothesis, but the reality that we feel in every daily step.”
Such alert sounded justified. With an annual birth rate close to 45 per thousand inhabitants and a mortality of 13, The number of Colombians multiplied during those years at the vertiginous rhythm, One of the highest in the world. According to the 1964 census, the population bordered 17.5 million people, 51 percent more than in the 1951 measurement.
Multiple leaders talked about a true powerful social bomb, due to the impossibility of creating educational quotas, Build homes or generate jobs to accommodate more and more people. Given the apocalyptic predictions, throughout that decade the issue of family planning took strength, despite the burning opposition of the Catholic Church.
Such debates are clearly part of the past. Although over half a century the increase continued to the 53 million calculated by the DANE by 2025, the situation is radically different.
Another reality
So much, that the entity has just anticipated the date on which the population peak will arrive. They show it the demographic projections that the institution completed in recent weeks and whose last installment took place on Friday of the week ending. According to the estimate, at some point in 2043 Colombia will exceed 56 million people, which would go down to just over 50 and a half million by 2070.
Experts have predicted that at some point in the future we will go from being increasingly less and less. But what attracts attention is that this moment is much closer than what was thought until recently.
Without going any further, at the beginning of 2021 the DANE said that in 2064 a maximum of 63.2 million would be reached. After incorporating the impact of the pandemic and reviewing certain parameters, The date was advanced to 2051, when 57.7 million inhabitants would be reached.
A variation of so much magnitude is unusual, especially in such a short period. For example, when the exercises of the same cut that performs the United Nations are observed, the perspective also differs from that of a few years ago, but in different proportions.
It is not at all that in the Colombian case someone has been wrong in the data, beyond that models that incorporate additional variables and Computing capabilities are broader on behalf of technology. The main reason is an abrupt decrease in birth, which already enters the category of collapse.
Older adult
Istock
The figures speak for themselves. In 2014, 669,137 births were registered in the national territory, a guard who experienced falls between one and two percent annually until 2021. By 2022, the downturn reached a surprise seven percent, The one that followed another of 10 percent in 2023 and one more than almost 14 percent in 2024when 445,011 new babies were counted.
This evolution means that, from an average close to the seven children per woman in 1960, The country went to three in 1985 and last year. That level is not only much lower than 2.1 per woman that is required for the population to remain constant, but it constitutes one of the lowest, both in the Latin American and global field. By way of comparison, in continental Europe only Spain shows similar behavior.
It is impossible to identify the precise causes of what happened, among others because there are many factors at stake. The break in the daily life that represented the emergence of COVID-19 had something to do, to the extent that it affected personal relationships and introduced additional elements of uncertainty with respect to the future.
Other elements that came from before, such as the greatest female insertion in the workforce or narrowness in the housing offer, enter the equation. Promptly, The effect of the massive arrival of Venezuelan mothers That they passed the border so that the birth was treated in a Colombian hospital, became less evident in this decade.
It is also true that humanity in general is having fewer children, something that is seen on the five continents. There are those who believe that on behalf of the revolution in communications that show a disrupted planet and the growing collective pessimism, Many couples decide not to conceive, not to mention the increasingly large number of unipersonal homes.
Anyway, what happened in Colombia is atypical on behalf of the speed at which things were transformed. Now what corresponds is to understand what is coming, because the country of tomorrow aims to be very different from the one we imagine at the beginning of the century.
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Of gray hair
Nor can the other key component be ignored, such as the sustained increase in longevity. Thanks to the advances of medicine, the greatest coverage of health services and the adoption of healthier habits, People live in general longer than that of the generation that preceded it.
According to the Dane, these levels are currently approaching 79 years for women already 74 for men, substantially higher than 73 and 65, respectively, observed in 1990. Violence indices, which mainly affect the male population, are the great responsible for gender disparity.
Since everything points to fewer children with older people, what is known as the population pyramid will change form. If the traditional was a triangle, now comes a rhombus in which the bulk of the population will be of Middle Ages.
But the most important thing is the investment at the extremes. For example, In 2018, children under 14 represented a quarter of the population Colombian and those over 60 reached 13 percent of the total. By 2050, the numbers will be similar, although vice versa. And in 2055 there will be 165 people 65 years and older per 100 children under 15.
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Baby
Istock
Within the positive that the new perspective brings is the extension of what is known as the demographic bonus, measured as the relationship of dependent persons for every three individuals of working age. As the number of children will be lower, The dependency load will be extended to 2055six years more than what was projected in the exercise that DANE did in 2023.
Beyond the general figures, one of the important contributions of the update in the projections that have just come to public light are the methodological changes. In this way, a multi -regional approach was adopted that, according to the technical note that accompanies the figures“It allows more realist to model the spatial redistribution of the population and capture the demographic effects of internal mobility observed in the country.”
This means that this tool will be key to mayors and governors, especially for those who come. To cite a case, Bogotá today houses 15 percent of Colombiansbut in 2050 that proportion would be less than 13 percent, an important variation.
Made the description of the main results, it is worth noting that the most recent estimates are not written in stone. Periodically, and to the extent that the measurements on the ground show behaviors other than those planned, the case adjustments will be made periodically.
It is valid to ask if birth rates will have important alterations over the years to come, as social behaviors are likely to change. Nor does it hurt to think that longevity will increase more accelerated in the future, on account of the innovations that come.
Apart from the above, academics and leaders will take their time to analyze what DANE. Whenever it is about visualizing the future, even within the rigid canons of statistics, divergent opinions appear and this occasion will not be different.
Perhaps the point that will cause more controversy is the treatment of international migration. For anyone it is a mystery that the flow of people arriving from Venezuela – more than two million individuals – altered the panorama radically.
Out of that impact, there is the emigration of Colombians to other countries, whose rhythm would continue to exceed the average of the last decade by broad margin. According to CERAC calculations, which is based on Colombia’s migration data, between 2022 and 2024, net exits of nationals by air exceeded 1.3 million people.
The above does not take into account those who go through the terrestrial borders, including passing through the Darién cap that reached important figures before Donald Trump apply the bolt. Given the promises of mass deportations, the sums and subtraction of the case will have to be done at the right time, but the truth is that many continue to go to other destinations.
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Pensions
EFE
It is enough to remember that for several years Colombians occupy the first place within immigrants who arrive in Spain. Only in the second quarter of 2025 the figure was 36,100as the INE has just reported, the entity responsible for carrying statistics in the Iberian country.
However, the Dane assumes that when crossing entries with exits from others in the national territory the result is very close to being zero. As the assumption differs from what comes from other sources, a deep investigation would be ideal to have a more precise snapshot.
A few months ago an important public discussion took place when Bank of the Republic made a simple account, which cannot be discarded at all. In 2024, The net between births and 273,772 deaths recorded in Colombia was 171,239 peoplewhich is why it is valid to propose that the population could have decreased, therefore, 391,406 would have left the country according to the official data.
If so, the scenario according to which we will begin to be less in 2043 would have to be examined. That and other unknowns could be resolved if in the years they are achieved, a census is achieved, something that will not be easy to finance in the midst of the known tax narrowings. But making the sacrifice will be worth it, among others, To know if the scare of the demographic explosion of the sixties of the last century, We are concerned with driving a country with fewer people and many more gray hair until the end of time.
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Ricardo Ávila
Senior Analyst – Special for Time (@ravilapinto)
