No generational handover: the opportunity of a well-designed migration policy

Costa Rica is no longer heading towards a demographic transition, it is already in it. The magnitude of the change has become a structural variable of competitiveness. The most striking fact is the fall in the birth rate. The INEC confirmed that the total fertility rate reached 1.12 children per woman in 2024 and that, since 2020, the country has been at ultra-low fertility levels. This means that, if the trend continues, each generation born will be smaller than the previous one, progressively reducing the population replacement at productive ages.

At the same time, INEC itself reported that overall mortality increased between 2014 and 2024. Read with a demographic lens, this increase does not necessarily imply a deterioration in health, but may reflect the ageing of the population structure: fewer people are being born, the population is living longer and the country is moving towards older ages. Put bluntly, there will be fewer people entering productive life and more people requiring services associated with old age.

Jordan Arias, director of Immigration Law, explains: "Costa Rica must build a coherent response that combines productivity, training and labour participation with migration that is well governed in criteria, swift in execution, robust in integration and clear in its economic and social purpose. This is what distinguishes countries that cushion ageing from those that suffer passively from it".

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