Newly released 2025 demographic data from the Dominican Republic’s National Statistics Office, published in the annual *Vital Statistics Yearbook*, offers a clear snapshot of the country’s mortality landscape, reinforcing two persistent demographic trends that have been observed for years: consistently higher death rates among men, and a mortality burden heavily concentrated among older populations.
According to the official dataset, a total of 43,032 deaths were registered across the Caribbean nation in 2025. Breaking down the figures by gender, men accounted for the majority of fatalities at 25,213, representing 58.59% of all recorded deaths. Women made up 41.35% of total deaths, with 17,795 registered fatalities. Just 0.06% of all deaths had no gender designation recorded on death certificates; of these 24 unclassified cases, 10 involved infants under one year of age, pointing to gaps in early-life vital documentation in some cases.
The most striking demographic pattern highlighted in the yearbook is the persistent excess mortality among men, a trend that holds particularly strong across the working-age and late middle-age spectrum. For individuals between 15 and 79 years old, male death rates are twice as high as those for women. Demographic analysts attribute this persistent gap to a combination of interconnected factors: inherent biological differences in disease susceptibility, higher rates of risky behaviors among men in the region, and greater occupational exposure to dangerous working conditions that elevate mortality risk.
When sorted by age group, the data also underscores the heavy impact of population aging on Dominican Republic’s mortality structure. More than 80% of all recorded deaths — 80.34% to be exact — occurred among people aged 50 years or older, confirming that the bulk of mortality burden falls on the country’s older population. Working-age adults between 25 and 49 accounted for 14.05% of total deaths, while children and young people between 5 and 24 made up just 3.41% of fatalities. The lowest share of mortality came from children under five years old, who represented only 1.86% of all registered deaths in 2025. A small fraction of cases, 0.33%, lacked any recorded age information at the time of publication.
The 2025 yearbook’s findings align with the most recent demographic trends tracked by national statistics officials, confirming that long-standing patterns in Dominican mortality remain intact. As the country’s population continues to age, public health officials note that these data will be critical for shaping targeted healthcare policies, addressing gender-specific health risks, and planning for the evolving health needs of an older population.