Population

Post World War II Ukraine’s population gradually increased to a peak of 51.9 million in 1993. From 1993 to 2014, the last year the populations in Donbas and Crimea were included, population had decreased by 6.6 million, or 12.8%. The decline was caused by a reduction in birth rate, emigration, and a slight increase in death rate, largely attributed to poor living conditions and low-quality health care.

Throughout the 19th and 20th centuries, millions of Ukrainians migrated to Canada, the United States, or other parts of the Russian Empire and the Soviet Union, creating a large Ukrainian diaspora. There are about 3 million Ukrainians living in Russia.

Since about 2015 there has been a growing number of Ukrainians working in the European Union, particularly Poland. Eurostat reported that 662,000 Ukrainians received EU residence permits in 2017, with 585,439 being to Poland. World Bank statistics show that money remittances back to Ukraine have roughly doubled from 2015 to 2018, worth about 4% of GDP. It is unclear if those moving to work in the EU intend this to be temporary of permanent. There are over 2 million Ukrainians working and living in Poland.

The industrial regions in the east and southeast are the most heavily populated, and about 67.2% of the population lives in urban areas.