In 1993 the population of Azerbaijan was around at 7.5 million. With 82 people per square kilometer, Azerbaijan is the second most densely populated of the Transcaucasian states; major portions of the populace live in and around the capital of Baku and in the Kura-Aras agricultural areas. Baku's population exceeded 1.1 million in the late 1980s, but an influx of war refugees increased that figure to an around 1.7 million in 1993. In 1993 the around population growth rate of Azerbaijan was 1.5 % per year. Gyandzha, in western Azerbaijan, is the second most populous city, with a population of more than 270,000, followed by Sumgait, just north of Baku, with a population of 235,000; figures for both cities are official 1987 estimates. Since that time, Gyandzha and Sumgait, like Baku, have been swollen by war refugees. With 54 % of Azerbaijanis living in urban areas by 1989, Azerbaijan was one of the most urbanized of the Muslim former Soviet republics. According to the 1989 census, the population of Nagorno-Karabakh was 200,000, of which over 75 % was ethnically Armenian.

In 1989 life expectancy was 67 years for males and 74 years for females. According to legend and to Soviet-era statistics, unusually large numbers of centenarians and other long-lived people live in Nagorno-Karabakh and other areas of Azerbaijan. In 1990 the birth rate was 25 per 1,000 population. The fertility rate has declined remarkablely since 1970, when the average number of births per woman was 4.6. According to Western estimates, the figure was 2.8 in 1990.

Azerbaijan is more populated than the other Transcaucasian states, Georgia and Armenia. Its population was an around 7,771,000 in 2001, giving it an average population density of 90 persons per sq km. The most densely populated area is the Abseron Peninsula in the east, where Azerbaijan’s major cities are located. contempt its larger population, Azerbaijan is the least urbanized nation of Transcaucasia, as only 57 % of its population lives in urban areas. The largest city is Baku, the capital. Other valuable cities include Gäncä, the industrial center of western Azerbaijan, and Sumgait, located on the Caspian coast and the second most valuable industrial center after Baku.