Kazakhstan's unexpected population boom appears to have run its course, two decades after the former Soviet republic showed modernization doesn't always correlate with fewer children.

The country recorded 77,300 births in the first quarter of this year, a 16 percent decline compared with the same period in 2024, according to official data.

Newsweek has reached out to the Kazakh health ministry by email with a request for comment.

Why It Matters

In the late 1980s and early 1990s, Kazakhstan's total fertility rate—the average number of births expected per woman—began falling sharply, dropping well below the 2.1 level needed to sustain a population during the economic and social upheaval that followed the disintegration of the Soviet Union.

The trend suddenly reversed in the early 2000s

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